


The Books of The Living And The Dead

by abigailnicole



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Bookstore or library?, Bookstore!AU, Casual Sex, Death Magic, F/M, Graphic descriptions of vomiting, Grim Reaper!AU, Lucien Is An In-Law, Lucien is A Good, Nesta buys a lot of clothes, Nesta has PTSD, Nesta is also depressed, Nesta only reads books and gets drunk aka the perfect life, Nesta/Cassian - Freeform, Nesta/other people, Night Terrors, Not appearing: feyre - rhys - elain, Self-Destructive Impulses, drinking! depression! pining!, fanciful descriptions of fancy bars, fortune telling is treated non-seriously, ignore your problems as a coping strategy, it’s really more of a theoretical bookstore, nesta is a death god who owns a bookstore, no books are sold in this fic, skipping work because You Are Dead, stories I made floor plans for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-11-28 11:56:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20966171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abigailnicole/pseuds/abigailnicole
Summary: Nesta thought not using her magic would protect her. She's trying to forget everything that happened to her, living off alcohol and nightmares and sex, and she can't say why she bought a bookstore. But some of the Fae she is seeing aren't alive, and all the things she is running from will catch up to her, from her magic to her mate.A “Nesta Is A Death God Who Owns A Bookstore” canonverse AUfour chapters of drinking, depression, sex, and redemption





	1. Dark Water

**Author's Note:**

> -there is [a playlist to go with this story](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02WeNDUrzsFgVIFjcZgP4l?si=V1vCS9GwQaeU9bK_2awA4Q) also that I listened to incessantly. the theme is sultry dark lady beats, like one might hear in a high-concept nightclub in Velaris  
-I made a floorplan of her [bookstore and apartment ](https://abigail-nicole.tumblr.com/post/188390097226/nestas-bookstore-apartment-for-the-books-of-the) because I Care That Much. You're all welcome  
-you can always (but don't have to) find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ailuridaen), [tumblr](https://abigail-nicole.tumblr.com) if you're into that  
-thanks for reading!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Nesta has nightmares, sees spirits, buys a bookstore, and converses with Amren and Bryaxis

Imagine her story starts like this: 

In a far away land, there was a wealthy merchant who had a beautiful wife and three beautiful daughters. The oldest one was very proud, the middle one was very kind, and the youngest one was very strong. They wore beautiful silk clothes and had a large beautiful house with a garden and a library. They lived happily in their large house, wanting for nothing. 

Their mother was a proud, strong woman, a noblewoman who had a position of importance in society. She did not spend much time with her children, but her daughters were in awe of their important, lovely mother. When the three sisters were small--eight, nine, and ten years old--their mother contracted typhus, and passed away. Their father was distraught and mourned her very much. At that time, he ran a large business as a merchant, but after his wife's death he did not do as well as he did previously. He began to lose money, and he became afraid. He risked all his ships on one dangerous trading voyage, hoping that it would be profitable enough to keep his debtors way. 

The voyage failed, and their father was left with no ships, no longer a merchant. The daughters were too young to understand why they must sell their beautiful silk clothes and their large beautiful house with a garden and a library--all but the oldest. She remembered her proud mother, so important, who loved having nice things, who was important and in charge. She became angry with their father for losing money, for forcing them to sell their beautiful things. When the debtors came to him, demanding money, he gave the debtors everything he had and it was still not enough. The eldest daughter hid her two sisters behind her skirt in a corner of the room as they watched the debtors break his father's leg to pay for his debts. After this her father did not speak to them like he used to.

Together they moved into a small hut in the country, and the oldest daughter's anger grew. She was angry at her mother for dying and leaving them all alone in a world that was suddenly very cold and very cruel. She was angry at her father, who had withdrawn and on himself with his grief and didn’t talk to his daughters. She was angry at her sisters, because they did not know how to survive in the world. Her anger was so strong sometimes she thought it would eat her whole body, leave nothing but a burned husk where she used to be. Her two sisters were too young to understand her anger, and her father was too isolated in his grief to notice the intensity in his eldest daughter. 

The winter came and the snow was very high, and the food was running out, and still their father sat numbly by the fire, carving small wooden figures. He did not seem to notice or care when they ran out of food. The oldest daughter waited for their father to do something. Surely he will see how much we are suffering and take care of us, she thought. And anger filled up her heart and her spirit, growing every day that her father did nothing. 

Finally the youngest daughter, who was very strong, gathered her sisters together. "I am going to hunt for meat for us to eat," she said, and took her bow and arrow and string for traps and went into the woods. 

"We used to live in a beautiful house, and wear beautiful clothes, and we did not have to hunt like commoners," the oldest one said. She was thinking of her beautiful, proud, important mother, and she was ashamed of her ugly, poor clothes, of their ugly, poor hut, and ashamed to watch her youngest sister go out into the woods to hunt because they could no longer afford food. "When will Father fix this?" she demanded, but her youngest sister had gone. 

The middle sister rested a hand on her oldest sister's arm. "He is still grieving," she said, and their father did not answer them. 

So the winter passed like this. And every day the winter got colder, and they grew thinner with hunger, and tired, and irritable. The middle sister was gentle, soothing her father, her oldest sister, her youngest sister. The youngest sister spent more and more time out in the woods, hunting for meat that seemed scarcer and scarcer even as she spent more and more time outside. 

And the oldest sister started to change, too. She could not see for the anger, driven into her heart, so strong it threatened to engulf her. Something inside her burned, and burned, and burned, so that at times she did not trust herself to speak. Maybe it is better if I die like this, she would think at times, than have my mother be ashamed of me now. 

But times change. And people change, too. And much later, the three sisters changed, too--the youngest to a powerful Fae, the middle sister to a graceful Seer. And the older sister changed, too, turned from Human into Something Else in the dark, dark water. But she was not so easy to categorize as her sisters, and no one quite knew what she was. She thought she knew, sometimes, but her anger was now mixed up with a bone-deep fear. She had taken something from that dark, dark water. And what she had taken was Death. 

\--- 

In those first months after the battles, Nesta had very bad dreams, when she slept at all. 

Often she dreamed of being drowned, feeling the black water filing up her lungs, the feeling she was falling. She knows she didn't spend years inside the Cauldron, but what happened to her took years, and during those years something in her mind changed, and in her dreams she is back there, in that life, knowing that the nightmare of the Cauldron was real life, and this life is just a dream of pain. In these dreams, she sees Elain, gasping in the black water, grabbing at her throat, unable to save her. She sees Cassian, crawling on the floor towards her in a dark puddle of his own blood, the pain on his face like a knife in her chest, and she feels something snap inside of her, something that is still broken. She dreams that Elain did not emerge from the Cauldron at all. She dreams that Cassian dies, bleeds out on the floor of that throne room, that she touches his cold face with trembling hands slick with his blood, while the king of Hybern laughs. In those first few months she could not handle the dreams. 

Those nights she woke gasping with the fear. She became very used to waking up on her gray sheets with her hands cramping from gripping the sheets, the bedframe so tightly, her throat raw from screaming, her stomach burning with acid, and often the terror was so bad she vomited, and every time she felt like she had when she clawed her way out of that Cauldron, trying to cough out its black water, to empty the burning in her lungs. For a while she would pace in her tiny apartment, cursing everything she could think of. She thought it would get better in a few weeks. 

In a few weeks when it did not get better she turned to drinking. When she drank, she did not wake in the night. If she threw up from alcohol before she went to bed, she slept dreamlessly, and her stomach hurt but did not cause her to heave into the toilet when she woke. 

She drank a lot, then. 

She got wine from corner stores, from wine stores, from inns and pubs, she got ale and beer and whiskey. From a special distillery on the Sidra she got a clear, floral liquor brewed from herbs that grew at night that was her favorite of all. After a while she started with that one, because after two or three glasses she didn't care what it tasted like, anyway. 

No one asked how she would pay for things. Her sister was High Lady of this land. She bought what she wanted, wandering the streets of Velaris and stopping in any store that caught her eye. Books, it turned out, and clothes, were the only things she felt inclined to buy. In bookstores she would pick up any book that sounded interesting and start reading. She bought dresses with high necks, mostly, and long skirts, unable to avoid feeling exposed in the unfamiliar fashion of the Night Court. Lace, silk, brocade, velvet filled up her closet. Slowly her apartment had become nothing but stacks of novels and an ever-growing closet (and a corresponding cache of empty bottles). 

Nesta had never been less busy in her life. She wandered the streets, stopping to admire beautiful clothes, spending hours fingering silks or velvets in stores, speaking with shopkeepers as little as she could. 

She didn't see her sister. Feyre was nothing but busy. Too busy to visit. Always in and out of the city. Too busy with everything. Now pregnant. Nesta hadn't seen her. She heard the rumors, at the bars she visited. No one asked her about it. 

"Aren't you lonely?" Amren asked once, sitting with her on the floor of her apartment, leafing through books on top of the newest stack. Nesta set down the book she had been reading. 

"Am I?" Nesta asked. 

"Just buy bookshelves for these and call yourself a bookstore," Amren said. "Give some excuse for your moping, child."

\--

Things begin to happen to her. Sometimes when she sits in bars and looks out the windows she sees Fae watching her, standing just outside the window, staring at her across a crowded bar. The first time she saw one she asked the bartender "Who is that?" and gestured to the window, but the bartender shook his head at her.

"Who?" he asked.

"The person outside the window," Nesta says. "The fae with the dark green hair, staring inside."

"There's no one there, lady," the bartender says, giving her a curious look, and Nesta turns to look over her shoulder.

The Fae is still very much there. A female, with a short, heart-shaped face and hair like moss, with antlers like deer coming out of her head. She stares at Nesta silently, and Nesta abruptly turns back to the bartender.

"She must have gone," Nesta says, brightly, and orders another drink.

She drinks facing the bar, her back to the windows, and when she leaves the bar there is no sign of the mossy-haired female. She sits on the bank of the Sidra as the sun rises, shredding leaves in her hands, until she is sober, until her favorite bookstores opens in the morning. She does not go home. 

It continues to happen. Usually she sees them when she is in bars, faces that stand just outside the windows that no one else can see. Once when she was at a market, picking up pomegranates, she was aware of a small, black-skinned creature as small as a child, wearing a white shift with stains on it, who stared at her mutely from across the square. As she paid for the pomegranates the creature began to walk towards her, and she turned and ran from the market. 

She sees them often. They do not move. They do not speak. They do not come in. They stay for hours. When she sees them, she drinks until she doesn't see them anymore. 

\---

"Well, you could be hallucinating," says Amren. They are sitting in a tea shop Amren likes, buried deep in a back alley in the bustling heart of the city. Her silver eyes survey Nesta sharply, over a steaming cup of delicately-steeped tea with silver flowers mixed with the tea leaves.

"I know what I see," Nesta hisses, setting her cup down in the saucer. 

"I am not doubting that you see, girl," Amren says. "But you have been through much. And gone through experiences no one can fathom. The mind does what it must to make sense of experiences." 

Nesta shakes her head. "We thought that about Elain, too," she says. "But her visions are real." 

Amren takes a sip of tea and surveys her critically. "Well, have you spoken to them?" she asks. "If they can't talk back, that gives you an answer, at least."

"No," Nesta says, staring down into her teacup. 

Amren shrugs one shoulder up. "It seems a logical next step," she says dryly. "After all, girl, you were Made. Perhaps your vision is different from the rest of us." 

\---

Nesta does a lot of shopping these days, to pass time, and since she gets unlimited credit when she tells them she is the High Lady's sister, she stops paying attention to prices. It is hard to say if Nesta really loves anything, but she develops an encyclopedic knowledge of Prythian fashion. Wandering the streets in the fashion district, she goes into stores for every territory. She disdains the high waisted pants and short shirts favored by the Night Court, dresses with deep slits in the back, the front, the neck--it's like someone took a perfectly good dress and cut straight lines into it for no reason, she thinks. Even in the Night Court she can find stores selling imports from all of Prythian. The Day Court fashion she can get in Velaris is full of loose, boldly patterned shifts, with long stoles and hemlines that stop just above the ankle, with no definition to the garments. The Dawn Court fashion makes her think of Elain, with light, pale fabrics in silk and gauze, skirts that fall to the knee and colorful shoes. Of the seasonal court she prefers the high-necked, long-sleeved, long-skirted dresses of Autumn, with their cinched waists and deep, single colors, or Winter's many-layered wool and fur coats with hoods and high collars, though the Winter fashion for men and women alike to wear leggings makes her shrink back. Spring's frilly, overwrought dresses in layers of petticoats and ruffles remind her of the nobles she has come to hate from the village where they used to live. Summer's light, short dresses and draped tunics that leave legs and arms bare she barely bothers to glance at. 

Her favorite store sells Autumn fashion, on an out-of-the-way alley in Velaris that's cut at an odd angle, with one tree in front with silver bark and dark leaves. The window displays are all in black velvet, absorbing all light except for one red dress of shiny silk, buttoned to the throat, with white lace the spills from the neck and from the sleeves, at the elbows. There's a dark blue door next to the entrance to the store with a For Rent sign. Nesta has seen it every tie she goes in this shop--which is often, her current dark green shirt and black brocade skirt come from this store--but this time she stares at the door, Amren's words ringing in her head. It doesn't matter if I sell anything, she thinks to herself. 

The owner is the same as the shop. She walks Nesta up; a rickety set of stairs that creaks alarmingly. The store front has three tall, narrow windows, and a half-wall partitioning the stairs from the rest of the room. 

"Yes, this one," Nesta says, and signs the contract. 

The ceilings are tall, with two rickety chandeliers that fill with Fae light automatically when the room is occupied, a spell leftover from the former owner. She puts in bookshelves of dark wood, lining the back wall, side walls, even the wall above the stairs. The ceilings are tall enough that she puts a ladder in to reach the top shelves. She puts a narrow counter next to the half-wall, boxing herself in against the wall. She puts half-height bookcases between the windows. 

In the day the room is too bright, the tall windows too imposing, and so she buys curtains next, two sets--a sheer set of dusty pink muslin that allows light in but tints it, makes the room feel rosy. Over it she puts curtains of dark teal velvet that block out all light. Under each of the three windows she puts, eventually, a chaise; one in red velvet, one in green velvet, and one in blue velvet, each with a small lamp at the opposite end, sealed from each other by the half-wall bookshelves. Behind the desk she puts a tufted couch, long enough for her to lay down. 

As a move-in present, Amren helps her lug all her boxes of books up the rickety stairs, grumbling that they should get one of the stupid High Fae with useful magic to carry the boxes up the stairs. Neither of them do. When Nesta unpacks all the boxes, her books fill up one shelf. She looks at the books on the shelf and feels--something. Long after Amren leaves she sits on the red velvet chaise, looking at those books, with only one lamp burning. 

\---

The first time Nesta realizes that the Fae she has been seeing are dead is when she sees a young Fae with gray skin and all black eyes at the end of an alleyway. It is late at night, outside a bar she likes to go when she doesn't feel like talking, a bar where everything inside is in black fabric, with low lighting, and strong, clear drinks. Tonight she wears a high necked, dark blue dress with silver lace on the skirt, lace that glints in the darkness outside the bar when she stops in the alley to throw up in a trash can. 

When she turns around the Fae is there, at the mouth of the alley. It is a tall, thin thing, with long limbs and eyes that have no whites at all. It wears a long black tunic that drags on the ground but leaves its long arms bare. 

Later, to Amren, she cannot describe how she knows that it is dead. Its face looks like any other Fae face she would see in the market. There are no visible wounds on its body, no scars, no blood coming from its throat or its belly. But now, in the darkness of the alley, she just looks at it and knows. 

"I am lost," it whispers to her, and its voice is very high and thin. "Guide me." 

"I don't know where you want to go," Nesta says. She stumbles back a step, against the wall of the alley. The Fae takes a step towards her. The situation would be threatening, she realizes dimly through her alcoholic haze, if she were--anyone else. If she were her old self. In this moment she feels a dull anticipation rising. 

"Guide me," it whispers again. It towers a foot and a half over Nesta's head, forcing her to look up at its thin, angular face, into those large, dark eyes. "God of death, guide me to the river." 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nesta says, more loudly. She stands up straighter against the alley wall. It has been a long time since she trained with her magic, since she remembered to do this, but she casts her mind out the way she used to, reaching into the corners of herself to grasp the edges of her power. "Go home," Nesta says, holding threads of her power in her mind. "I cannot guide you--"

"Miss?" someone says, at the mouth of the alley, and Nesta turns. It is the bartender, peering around the corner. "Are you all right? Who are you talking to?" 

Nesta drops the threads of her power and looks back towards the Fae--but there is no one in the alley with her. The dull edge of anticipation twists on her and she feels the fear in her mind start to creep back up, tinged with panic. 

"No one is here," she says to the bartender, and gives him a brittle smile. "To myself, clearly. I think I need another drink," she says, louder, and follows the bartender back inside. She does not turn around and look in the alley to see if those dark eyes gleam at her from the shadows. 

That night she stays out drinking all night, and only leaves the bar when the sun rises. She watches carefully as she stumbles out at sunrise into the pink-lit streets. There are always people out at night in Velaris, a city as active at night as during the day, but at this in-between time the streets are strangely empty, strangely silent. She hugs her arms around her torso. She walks the streets until she is sober, shivering in the early autumn cold. She looks into every alley she passes, but she does not see the gray-skinned Fae again. 

\---

Nesta goes back to the bookstore. Her bookstore, she thinks, as she climbs the fifteen rickety stairs to the second story, her feet creaking on the hardwood floors. The teal velvet curtains are tucked back, but the pink sheer curtains cover the windows. Sunlight still streams through them, early morning sun casting long rectangles over the shelves, the velvet chaises, the one full bookshelf near the door. Nesta walks up and down the floor, picks up a book from the shelf and carries it to the far chaise lounge, then the middle, then the near one. She reads a few pages, then stands up to pace again, running her fingers over the dark wood bookshelves. Not expensive bookshelves. There is a small bathroom at the opposite end from the stairs, with a small door that breaks up the line of bookshelves. She picks at the doorknob, thinking to herself that she doesn't want it to be there, then decides to cover the door with shelves, too, make it into a secret door. She scribbles a note to herself, pockets it, and then paces restlessly again, picking up and setting down books. 

"They're dead," she murmurs to herself, standing in the middle of a pink-tinted square of sunlight, holding a book she can't focus on. "They're all dead." 

Silence answers her. She sits on the couch behind the desk, next to the stairs, and drums her fingers restlessly on the book's cover. "What do they want from me?" she mutters again, then sets the book down on the couch. Nesta stares down the room of empty, empty bookshelves. 

"I should go home," she says, and gets her shawl, gets the new key to the store, and walks out. 

\---

She does not go home. She goes to Amren's apartment, knocking loudly on the door until Amren, scowling, opens it for her. 

"They're dead," Nesta says, without preamble, walking into the room to sit on a bench across from Amren's bed. 

"Who's dead?" Amren asks. "What's happened?" 

"Nothing's happened," Nesta says impatiently. "The people I've been seeing, Amren. Those Fae. They're dead." 

Amren sits down on the edge of her bed and is silent for a moment. "How do you know?" 

"I talked to one," Nesta says. "Like you said. It was a tall Fae with gray skin, and I saw it in an alley outside the Wolf's Den. But I knew before it said anything," she says, her tone changing on the last sentence.

"You knew by looking at it?" Amren asks.

"Yes," Nesta says.

"How?"

"Something was missing," she says, her voice frustrated. "Something was missing from its face that isn't missing from alive people." 

"Okay," Amren says after a short silence. "And then you spoke to it." 

"It spoke to me," Nesta says. "It called me a God of Death. And it asked me to guide it to the river." 

"And somehow you knew this was not just a drunk looking for directions to the Sidra," Amren says, raising an eyebrow. 

"Yes, it's extremely typical that drunk passers-by refer to me as the God of Death," Nesta says, her tone irritable. 

"Okay, fine," Amren says. "Magic is mysterious. You are mysterious. Stranger things have happened." 

Nesta sits silently for a moment. Amren yawns and reaches over to flick the curtain away from the window, letting in a bright, early morning sunbeam. 

"What do I do now?" Nesta asks. "What do they want from me? What is the river?" 

"I have no answers, girl," Amren says, and now hers is the irritable tone, her gaze sharp on Nesta's face. "But..." 

"But?"

"There were three Death-Gods in Prythian, before," Amren says, slowly. "Stryga the Weaver, the Bone Carver, and Koschei the Deathless." 

"But not now," Nesta says, her voice flat into the silence. 

"No," Amren says, and when Nesta looks at her her eyes are glittering, strangely. "Not now." 

"Now two of them are dead," Nesta says, and for some reason her voice is a whisper. 

"Magic hates a void," Amren says dryly. "Maybe you took their place." 

"I have trouble believing that the Weaver would guide lost souls to a river when they asked nicely," Nesta says. 

Amren chuckles. "But the Bone Carver?" she asks. 

"Maybe," Nesta concedes. 

Amren leans back against her headboard. She picks up a silver knife with a jewel-encrusted hilt off her nightstand and begins to clean her nails with it. 

"The Bone Carver saw visions," Amren says, thoughtfully. "He could see the future, and the past. He wasn't, from what I hear, terribly cruel. Your sister, now, sees visions." 

"That would make more sense if hers had started when he died," Nesta says. 

"True," Amren says. "But maybe the Goddess couldn't abide two Seers, and now the Bone Carver is dead. The Weaver is dead also." 

"So you're saying that it's awfully convenient that Elain gets Seer powers, the existing Seer who is the Bone Carver drops dead, and that makes me...." Nesta's voice trails off. 

"The other one who died was the Weaver," Amren says quietly. 

"What do you know about her?" Nesta says. "She stole life to keep herself young?" 

"More than that I don't know," Amren says, shaking her head. "You might go to the Library." 

"And talk to that creature?" Nesta says, looking up, but Amren is scowling. 

"To _read_," she says, frowning at Nesta. "Do not talk to Bryaxis." 

"I'm gonna talk to it," Nesta says, standing up. 

"Do not talk to it." 

"I'm gonna talk to it," she says, edging towards the door, and Amren holds up the knife menacingly. 

"Don't--"

"Nice chat, thanks," Nesta says, and shuts the door behind her on the way out.

\--- 

She goes back to the Library, the one she went to with her sister, and walks the spiral down to the lowest level. She walks slowly. She wears a long dress the color of a pearl, tied with a black ribbon at her waist for a belt, and wears her hair high on her head. 

When she was here before she ran from the creature in the bottom of the library. Now she seeks it out. Her hands brush the dark bookshelves. She can't summon Fae-light the way the rest of them can--her powers aren't like theirs. She carries a candle, flickering shadows around her on either side. When she comes to the bottom of the pit she ties the wide ribbon carefully around her eyes, and steps forward.

_Are you come to visit me?_ Bryaxis asks her. _Are you come to tell me about life?_

"I come to talk," she says, and her voice trembles only a little. "I have a question for you." 

_Nesta,_ Bryaxis says, and his voice is sing-song. _Nesta, Nesta, not like the High Lady, not like human, not like the Fae. Something else. What do you come to ask me?_

"My sisters--my sister Elain," Nesta says. "She got something from the Cauldron. A gift." 

_The Seer who looks across the world,_ Bryaxis says. 

"I received no gift," Nesta says. 

_You, Young One, did not come to speak of life, _Bryaxis says. _You did not get a gift of Life from the Cauldron. You are like me._

Somewhere in the darkness that was Bryaxis, Nesta felt a smile from him. _You are a creature of Death, now, like I am. _

"What does that mean?" Nesta asks, her voice barely a whisper, but some part of her knows. 

_You have spoken to the dead. They want to move on. _

"How do I help them? Why me?" 

She cannot see beyond the black satin of her ribbon but it feels like there is wind now, pulling tendrils of her hair across her face, whipping the end of the ribbon against her neck, ruffling the edge of her long skirts. 

_There is a void now, _Bryaxis says, and the voice in her mind is louder, as if speaking over the wind. _What happens when we die, Nesta? _

"I don't know," Nesta says, raising her own voice in answer. "Even the Bone Carver didn't know, he who could see death. They said he asked and asked Feyre about the other side." 

_The Weaver and the Bone Carver were old death gods,_ Bryaxis says. _I am but a lapdog of nightmares. I drink at the shore of that river but I cannot travel on it. But you....you may travel that dark water. After all, you know that water. _

"The water of the Cauldron is from the river of death?" Nesta asks, tilting her face up. 

_What have you seen?_ Bryaxis asks. 

"I saw a Fae child, with black skin, in the market," says Nesta. 

_How did it die? _

Nesta swallows. In the darkness, with the wind still pulling on the fabric of her sleeves, she knows. "In the attack on Velaris," she says, her voice so soft it could be lost in the wind. "One of the Attor's legions hit her in the chest with an arrow. The last thing she saw was the sky, filled with their wings." 

_Yes,_ Bryaxis says. _What was her name?_

"Keres," Nesta whispers. She has kept her eyes shut behind the blindfold but now she opens them, still able to see only the blackness behind the ribbon. "How do I know this?" 

_She wants to go back to the river,_ Bryaxis says. 

"I don't know how to do this," Nesta says, into the darkness.

_I cannot guide you. Death is a trip everyone must take for themselves. _

"What a most unhelpful statement," Nesta grumbled, and she felt the wind pick up and heard something that could have been laughter from Bryaxis. "I guess I'll have to read some of those books after all." 

_It is lonely here,_ Bryaxis says, as she turns around and takes a step forward, feeling the wind lessen. _Thank you for coming to talk._

"Anytime," Nesta whispers, and is surprised to find that she means it. "I'll come back." 

She takes the ribbon blindfold off as she walks, but does not look back at the shadow and the wind behind her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -general notes: I am throwing an E on this because I'm not opting out of writing porn and I reserve the right to write a sex scene whenever I want  
-about 3/4 chapters are written & this will be finished I promise.  
-If you are on Fandom Twitter, please leave me your username, I need some ACOTAR people to follow because I only follow Reylos and they're Too Thirsty. I'm [@ailuridaen](https://twitter.com/ailuridaen)  
-Nesta is of course a gin drinker  
-Nesta becomes very obsessed with fashion while having extremely particular tastes, and is totally one of those "I don't wear knockoffs" people. Anyone want a moodboard of her clothes? spoiler alert it's all high neck cinch waist floor length dark jewel tones.  
-Acheron (not Archeron) is one of the seven Greek rivers into the underlife. It is known as the River of Woe. But damn that coincidence though!  
-Keres are female mythological Greek death-spirits


	2. New Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Nesta becomes ill, meets a new friend, an old friend, and a dead friend

"You need a name for your bookstore," Amren says, one day when she is visiting, sitting on the desk, drinking something through a straw. 

"Only if I ever intend to start selling anything," Nesta points out. She's lying on her stomach on the couch behind the desk, book open in front of her, but she's staring idly at the pages and not reading. It's from the Library, a historical account about a woman who supposedly chained the three Death Gods to their lairs; Stryga to the Wood, the Bone Carver to the Prison, Koschei to the lake. But it seems wrong, full of factual errors even Nesta, whose knowledge of Prythian history is zero, can pick up on. Something seems off about the woman, too, though Nesta can't say what. She closes the book and hands it off to Amren with her right hand. "This seems fishy to me. Do you remember this woman?" 

"I really did mean a bookstore, not a personal library," Amren says. "I don't understand why you buy those romance novels. You go through so many and never reread them. Sell them off." 

"I reread some," Nesta says, picking up the next book from the stack she got from the Library. Amren picks up the book Nesta hands her. 

"This is well-known historical garbage," Amren informs her, holding up the book. "I met this guy. He was terrible. Did no research." 

Nesta sighs and sits up, stretching. "You were around then, right? Did you meet this lady?" 

"I was otherwise occupied," Amren says, testily. 

"Okay," Nesta says. "But none of this is helpful. History, myth...why couldn't someone write a how to guide for when you start seeing dead spirits?" 

Amren stares at her without blinking and Nesta sighs. "It was a joke," she says, and Amren raises an eyebrow at her. _Elain would have laughed,_ she thinks, but then looks down. She wouldn't have, though. Not since the Cauldron. The sister that Nesta spent so many years taking care of was someone else now. And someone else who had a life without Nesta, happier without her--

_Stop it,_ she tells herself, and looks up, meets Amren's eyes. The Fae is still staring at her, her gaze sharp, as if she knows what Nesta is thinking. 

"How is she?" Nesta asks, unable to stop herself.

Amren blinks, finally, and her gaze softens a millimeter. "Elain is well," she says, more quietly. "Baking, from what I understand. Gardening. She is developing new species of flowers, or something." Amren, who does not go for botany, frowns.

Nesta feels her eyes fill with tears, but she smiles unexpectedly--a smile that would look out of place to anyone who knows her well, a smile that isn't cruel or haughty, but soft, and genuine, changing the whole landscape of her face. She blinks, and tears spill over and her smile twists. She puts her face in her hands, breathing deeply, trying not to cry. 

Amren, never one given to hand holding and comforting, watches her silently. She does not pat Nesta on the back, or tell her that she should go see her sister and everything will be all right. Nesta appreciates it more than she can say. 

"Sorry," Nesta says, when her breathing is under control. 

"How do you feel about pun-based bookstore names," Amren asks, picking up the next book on the table next to her. 

"No," Nesta says. "Absolutely not. It'll come to me. If I ever try to actually sell anything." 

Amren glances at the empty shelves. One tall shelf by the door is filled with romance novels; the rest stand bare, the ladder resting gently against the dark wood, the handle of the bookshelf-hidden door visible without any books to cover it. 

"If you ever try," she says, in a tone of agreement, but Nesta has a feeling she's talking about more than selling books. 

\---

Nesta has several bars she frequents, and tonight she visits the Full Moon Bar. It's known for floors, which are dark marble set with pale moonstone cutouts in the phases of the moon, magically illuminated at night. The bar is atop the glowing disc of the full moon. It's usually too upscale for her taste—meaning the drinks are too weak—but tonight she wears a red silk dress with billowy sleeves, her hair up, and sits in the shadow of an illuminated crescent moon. 

To her right, on the half moon, three males are playing a game on a black velvet table. They hold sticks, but move then back and forth like they are cards. Their leader is a tall Fae with silvery blonde hair, cruel lips, and dark hazel eyes. She watches as he picks up the sticks and sets one aside, carefully, then splits the pile carelessly in half and sets the pile down. One stick he tucks into his closed fist, and then starts pulling sticks out of his hand in bundles. When only three remain he puts those in his fist, too, then pick up the other half of the bundle and repeats the process. He notes the number to his friend, who writes it down, and then passes the sticks along to the next male. The silver-haired male looks up and catches Nesta's gaze. 

He buys her a drink, something with gin and elderflower, and brings her to the table. "It's a fortune telling game," he says, as Nesta's eyes follow the sticks in his friend's hand. "Well, we play it as a game, anyway." 

"Not the best," says the male next to him, with dark hair. "Too much counting." 

"Hox prefers easier game," the first male says, as Hox takes a drink.

"I prefer games where we don't have to bloody carry a reference book," Hox snorts. "Faolin has always loved turning fortune telling into a game," he tells Nesta, dryly, and Faolin, the silver-haired one, smiles into his drink. 

"We are soldiers," Faolin says, as the other male finishes and passes the sticks to Hox. 

"Eight," he says, then writes the numbers down on a scrap of paper next to his drink. 

"Our lives are governed by fate and chance," Faolin continues, as Hox continues to move sticks around, setting aside bundles of four and holding sticks between fingers of his closed fist. "As we play games of chance with our lives in battle, why not treat fortune telling as the game that it is?" 

"He always does this," the third male says to Nesta, rolling his eyes. "I'm Scyph." 

"Nesta," she says. "This random counting of sticks is fortune telling?" 

"Random number generation," Scyph says. "Each round we count out three groups that end up being 4 or 5, or else 8 or 9, and you assign them numerical values, and then give those values a line, and then do it enough times to get six lines, then look up the lines in a reference book to see what they mean..."

"And getting the full hexagram gives us plenty of time to drink, to take the edge off our the precarious chance of our harrowing existence," Faolin says, finishing his first drink. "Usually one hexagram is enough to make us all suitably tipsy." Hox finishes his count and binds the sticks together, passing them back to Faolin. 

"Of course there are many ways to do this," Hox says. "It's an old method of fortune telling, after all." 

"But when it comes to assigning meaning to random coincidences, does it really matter which one you use?" Scyph asks, raising an eyebrow, and takes a sip of his drink. 

"You see our trio, Nesta darling," Faolin says, winking at her. She raises one eyebrow at him. "The skeptic, the mystic, and me." 

"And who are you in this scenario?" she asks, finishing her next drink. 

Faolin finishes picking up the sticks and reaches over to make a mark on Scyph's paper. He leans back and meets Nesta's eyes with his hazel ones. She likes the color of his eyes, she thinks, imagining them in firelight, and in the haze of alcohol doesn't think about the memory. A smile dances at the edge of his full, cruel lips. "I'm thirsty," he says, and his eyes drop to her lips, then drop lower on her body. He stands up. "I think it's time for another drink. Care to join me?" 

They walk the phases of the moon across the dark floor, half to gibbous to full, and Nesta gets another--sixth? seventh? drink. She's drunk enough to let Faolin's hand settle around her waist, his fingers falling into the groove between her ribcage and the top of her hips that's more prominent these days. They take the long way back, following the moon phases of the bar, Nesta leaning into Faolin's side as he runs fingers lightly down her side. He stops her on the new moon and turns her to face back toward the full moon bar, the half moon where Hox and Scyph are finishing the sticks for the hexagram, presses his body against her back. "This is my favorite moon phase," he murmurs, his mouth very close to her ear, his breath hot on her neck. "Something so mysterious about the dark." 

Alcohol is sloshing in her veins and she can feel him behind her, starting to harden against her ass, and his breath trails hot down the side of her neck. She feels something warm and low in her gut. 

"I prefer to see," she says, and turns around, grabbing his chin. "What lovely eyes," she says, and then her eyes flicker down. "And what full lips you have, too. Do you know how to use them?" He moves toward her, angling his face like he would kiss her, and she steps back. "Oh no," she says, "not like that," and Faolin's cruel lips curve into a symmetric smile. 

"Would you like to find out?" he inquires, his voice a low purr. 

"We should say goodbye to your friends," Nesta says. 

They complete the circuit, coming back to Hox and Scyph. "What was the hexagram, after all?" Nesta asks. Faolin's hand is on her lower back. 

"Hexagram 29," Hox says, looking uneasy. 

"Oh?" Nesta says, leaning back. "And what's the mysticism associated with that?" 

"Well, like all fortune telling, it's open to interpretation," Scyph says. "With many meanings, of course." 

"But something like...the abyss," Hox says. "Depth, danger, darkness. A challenge you must rise to meet and cannot avoid." 

"And here I was hoping for something nice like hexagram 54," Faolin says, his voice light. Scyph rolls his eyes. 

"Go get a room already," he says. 

"Oh, don't worry," Nesta says, setting her now-empty drink on the table. "I'll bring him back if he doesn't live up to expectation."

Hox and Scyph both start laughing and Nesta pulls Faolin out of the bar. 

\---

They walk quickly back to her apartment in the cold air, walking close together, Faolin's hand around her waist gripping tightly. She undoes the three locks and lets them into her apartment, pulling the door shut, and then Faolin is on her, his lips meeting hers against the door, hands roving up and down her body. 

Nesta pushes him off roughly. "Clothes off," she says, leaning back against the door. 

"Should we walk to the bedroom?" Faolin asks, reaching as if to take her hand, and Nesta folds her arms across her chest. 

"I want to make sure I like what I see," she says, cooly. She lifts her face to meet his eyes, gray meeting hazel.

Maintaining her gaze, he strips his coat off, dropping it on her couch, pulls his shirt unbuttoned, and with some difficulty steps out of his pants. He is erect, and as her eyes travel up and down his body his cock twitches in anticipation. Like most Fae males, he is beautiful, his body all hard planes and muscle. His cock is fine, though she's had bigger. 

"You'll do," Nesta says, and walks past him toward the bedroom. 

"Gods, but you're terrifying," he mutters, following her. 

"You know where the door is," Nesta says, her dress already half over her head, but then feels his hands on her own, helping her undress. 

"Luckily for you," he breathes, as he turns her around, "I really go for scared and aroused." 

\---

Nesta didn't drink enough, or else she sobered up too quickly before she went to sleep, because the night terrors come again. She wakes herself before dawn with screaming, disoriented and angry, leaping out of bed clutching a sheet, and does not recognize Faolin, wide-eyed and crouching on the other side of the bed. 

"Nesta?" he says, gently, and it comes rushing back to her, and with it a wave of nausea. She can't get enough air in her lungs and she feels like she's drowning again. 

"Leave," she manages to get out while lurching for the bathroom. Over the sound of her vomiting she doesn't hear him, and by the time the vomiting and the panic subsides and she can breathe again, she is the only one in the apartment. 

\--- 

Nesta returns her books to the library, after a week. She hasn't found anything except legends, all of which contradict each other, none of which have anything like information she needs. This time she wears a dress of emerald green velvet, with a gray cloak over it with a wide hood she can pull down over her eyes. She walks the long spiral down the library, ignoring the shelves, holding her single candle. She comes to the bottom and hesitates, then uses her free hand to pull her hood down, over her eyes. 

"I'm back," she announces, and feels a gentle wind start to pick up the hem of her dress. 

_Nesta, _Bryaxis purrs at her. _You do keep your promises. _

"Of course I do," she says. All she can see is the inside of her hood and, at the bottom of her vision, her candle flickering in the wind. She lifts her chin towards the voice, towards the wind. "I need help."

The wind circles around her. _Help? From me? How can I help you, trapped here?_

"They asked me to guide them," Nesta says. "I've read the books, everything that I can find, but nothing tells me how to make the magic." 

_Are you asking me? I cannot guide you. _

"Well, you live in a library," Nesta says. "I thought you'd at least have book recommendations."

The wind picks up, lifting the edge of her cloak and dress, though her hood stays down, and she feels amusement in Bryaxis's voice. _Yes, _Bryaxis murmurs. She hears a wind far away she cannot feel, and then something heavy comes to rest against her leg. _Try this book,_ he says. 

"Thank you," Nesta says, reaching down and picking it up with her other hand. It is large, and heavy. 

_What you need to do will not be easy, and it will not be easy to find,_ Bryaxis's voice says, into her mind. _I cannot do it. _

"Is there a price?" she asks, holding the book. She had been taught, like all humans are taught, that when Fae offer help, always ask the price. She feels the wind still around her. 

_Everything I know of life is from these books,_ Bryaxis says, and the wind coils around her. _I read their loves, their crimes, their passions, their wars, their knowledge, their kingdoms. I read of their magic. But it is not my magic. _

"I thought this was like your magic,_" _Nesta says. 

_The process is not the pathway,_ Bryaxis says. _I do not know the price of forming your pathway. But the book recommendation...._ the wind tugs at the edge of her cloak. _Call that one free. No one has ever asked me for a book recommendation before. _

"Thank you," Nesta says. 

_They will want to tell their stories,_ Bryaxis says. 

Nesta runs her fingers over the surface of the book, where she feels embossing she can't read. "Yes," she says. "I planned for that, I think. Before I knew what I was planning."

_Before?_

"I bought a bookstore," Nesta says. "But it's empty. I didn't know why, when I did it. But..." she drops her hand, spreading her palm out over the book cover. "It's for them, isn't it? To hold the stories of the dead." 

_All lives will be forgotten,_ Bryaxis says. 

"Telling a story is different from having a story read," Nesta says. 

The wind rises again, lifting her cloak, making her candle flame sputter. Bryaxis's laughter. _You are clever,_ Bryaxis says. _Bring me a story, when you have some. _

"I will," Nesta says. "And thank you." 

\---

She doesn't look at the book until she's back at her store, sitting at the tufted couch behind the desk. The cover reads one word that makes her heart beat faster--_Acheron, _it says. The author is not listed. 

It is mid-afternoon when Nesta starts reading, and well past midnight when she stops. As she closes the cover, the contents of the book are already fading in her memory, like the author said they would. But many parts she does remember. 

"I'm keeping this," she announces to the room, looking up to the empty bookshelves and the chandeliers. "Add stealing Library books to my long list of crimes." 

She stands, then, realizing how long she's been sitting, how stiff she is. She opens the hidden bookshelf door to the bathroom, blinking in the brightness of the white tile. This bathroom is too small for the tubs she's used to being a fixture of every bathroom, but someone has put a faucet high up the wall, and a drain on the floor. It's an easier version of the buckets she's been using to bathe, when she can stomach it, and she slides out of her green dress while the water is warming up. It feels good to stand under the water. Not like the small spaces and suffocating panic of a bathtub. When she emerges and dresses, her stomach is rumbling, and her head is starting to hurt. She leaves the book on the shelf and leaves the bookstore. 

\---

That night finds her at a different bar. This one is called the Whisper Chamber, famous in Velaris for its elliptical shape, the two gold stars set in the floor that let two people standing fifty paces from each other be heard with perfect clarity. The bar sits between them, lit from below. Tonight Nesta wears a gold dress, and on a whim orders champagne to match the shade. She doesn't usually drink champagne, because it takes too much to get her drunk. 

"Oh, there you are, darling," a voice purrs from behind her, and she turns around to find Faolin grinning wickedly at her. He nips at her ear and she holds up her hand to wave him off. He's clearly been drinking longer than she has. 

"Excuse me, bartender," he calls to the Fae behind the bar, a female with lavender skin and white hair. "She's on my tab, darling," he says too loudly, "and give us another two of those. What are you drinking, you charming woman? Champagne? Nevermind the drinks," he says louder, to the bartender, "let's finish the champagne first," and then turns back to Nesta. 

"Hello, Faolin," Nesta says, her voice even. 

"Oh, she remembers me!" Faolin crows, delighted, sliding into the barstool next to her. "She remembers my name! I am more than just a pair of hazel eyes to the golden witch-queen!" 

Nesta stiffens. "You're drunk," she hisses. 

"Yes, darling," Faolin says, reaching over and patting her hand. "Don't worry, we'll get you there. Oh there she is," he says, as the bartender sets down another two champagne flutes in front of them. He reaches out and picks his up, and stares pointedly at Nesta until she does the same. "Let's toast to me," he says, grinning at her, and she raises an eyebrow. "For getting to grace the lady's bed even without a pair of Illyrian wings," he says, holding his glass high, and then downs it in a single swallow. Nesta's cheeks burn. 

"You presume too much," she says, coldly, but Faolin puts a hand over her own. 

"I'm sorry, darling, I know you don't like to talk about it," he says, stroking the back of her hand with his long fingers. "I can be better, I can be quiet. Have some more champagne." 

Nesta drinks from her glass, her cheeks still crimson. "Oh you lovely creature, have I made you uncomfortable?" Faolin asks her, his eyes catching her own, and he grins once more. "Better have some more drinks, then," he says, and Nesta finds herself finishing off the second glass of champagne. "Yes, better," he says, and his hand moves from her hand to her side, stroking the side of her gown, tracing a line of golden embroidery. "So lovely," he says, finger running up a golden thread from her side, to her breast, up to the curve of her neck. "I hope I wasn't too disappointing last time, darling." 

Nesta shrugs. "You're adequate," she says, dryly, and Faolin thinks this is hilarious, almost falling off his barstool with laughter. He pours her a third glass of champagne. Nesta's tolerance is high, but it's been less than five minutes between her first and third glass, and she feels the bubbles coming up in her brain. Faolin looks happy, and bright, his cruel lips on the back of her hand, kissing it as she brings the champagne flute up to her lips. 

"I'm glad I'm adequate compared to the Illyrian war-god," he murmurs, laughing into his drink. 

"Wouldn't know," Nesta says, finishing the glass in two drinks. 

"Oh darling," Faolin says, his smile dropping, "you mean you haven't even slept with him?" 

"Oh, shut up," Nesta says, waving her hand, and Faolin's smile returns in a split second. 

"Bartender! Get me that gin and elderflower concoction for the High Lady's sister. Heavy on the gin, please." He turns back to Nesta, stroking the back of her hand with his long, thin fingers. "So that's it," he murmurs, and his lips curve again, in a silent smile to himself. He kisses the back of her hand, then his lips move up to her forearm, to the edge of her sleeve at her elbow. "I, for one, am glad," he murmurs, raising his face to hers. "You're exquisite, you golden thing. I'm going to fuck you in that beautiful golden dress until your eyes cross." 

Nesta's cheeks color but she feels her gut clench at the words. "Where are your friends tonight?" she asks instead, as the bartender brings her a gold-edged glass filled with clear liquid. "What hexagram did you get this evening that you're already so drunk?" 

Faolin waves his free hand, picks up his next drink. "Oh, they're here, they're here," he says, and stands up. "Let's go say hello, Nesta. Oh no hexagrams tonight, darling," he adds, as she stands up. "No, no, Hox was right, far too much math, too much consulting books. Tonight just straight up tarot cards for us. Come," he says, his face brightening with an idea, and he grabs her hand in his. "Let's tell your fortune, darling!" He pulls her across the room, calling "Scyph! Hox! Shuffle the cards. We must read for this golden witch-queen," and Nesta is at their table. 

Both Scyph and Hox are drunker than when Nesta first met them, their eyes glassy, and they laugh uproariously as Faolin brings her back to the table. Nesta takes a large drink of her cocktail, feeling it burn in the back of her throat. "My lady," says Hox, bowing theatrically. "Please, allow me." His cards are matte black, inscribed with gold foil, a lacy pattern on the back, a slim hand of twenty or so. He shuffles them and spreads them on the table in front of her. 

"Welcome, welcome," Scyph says, bowing to her as well, though less deeply than Hox. "Nesta, you're radiant. So lovely to see you again. I hope our friend did not disappoint." 

"Don't worry, she said I was adequate!" Faolin exclaims, and Scyph also bursts out laughing. "But tonight I'm going to try again," he tells Scyph, gesticulating with the hand holding his cocktail. "Gods, look at her. Resplendent." 

"Well, let's pull your fortune," Scyph says, taking a drink from his own glass. "Better make it the Lovers, Hox," he adds, and starts laughing again. 

"Nesta," Hox says, and she turns back to him, taking another drink from her glass. He bows his head to her. "You should think of a question," he says. 

"A question?" Nesta says, raising an eyebrow. 

"But don't say it aloud!" Faolin says, putting a finger in front of her lips. His eyes dance, and he taps her lips with his finger. "Just think it. Make sure the lady keeps her mystery," he says to Hox, as Hox spreads the cards on the table in front of him. Only twenty two, this time. 

As Nesta stares at the card, her mind buzzing with champagne and gin, she does think of him. Probably because Faolin mentioned him, she tells herself, but she wishes, desperately, for a glimpse of the right hazel eyes, of the curving wings. The fire ignites, low in her belly, as she thinks of him. How is he? she thinks, silently, and then looks up at Hox. 

"Choose ten cards, my lady," he says. "Three for the past, three for the present, three for the future, and one for tonight." 

She reaches down and picks cards at random, flipping them and then setting them in front of her. 

Judgement. The Star. The Hanged Man. The Hierophant. The World. The Magician. Strength. Death. The Devil. The Tower. 

"C'mon Hox, couldn't you smuggle The Lovers in there for me?" Faolin says, wrinkling his nose. He runs his hand up Nesta's side. 

"What do they mean?" Nesta asks. Hox picks up the cards. 

"The past," he says. "Judgement, the Star, the Hanged Man. Judgement is just that--judgement, calling. The Star is hope, purpose. The Hanged Man is surrender, the fool. Someone," he says, setting them down next to each other, "had a difficult past that led them to where they are, but grew into prominence from giving in and accepting it." 

"She must have asked about me," Faolin says, running the tips of his fingers across her forearms. "I can't see our darling Nesta giving in to anyone."

"The present," Hox says, after taking a drink, "is next. The Hierophant, the World, the Magician. The Hierophant is an authority figure, controlling the present. The World is accomplishment. The Magician is resourcefulness, power. Someone's having a good present," he adds, laughing. "Working with authority, gaining accolades, gaining power?" 

"Can't be about you, Faolin," Scyph interjects, laughing. "Your present is Hanged Man all the way."

"Oh, give me a few hours, and then I'll be a hung man," Faolin quips, and Scyph roars with laughter. 

Nesta ignores them. "What about these?" she says, tapping the next three cards. 

"The future," Hox says, pushing them forward. "Strength, meaning literal strength, or courage. Death--which could mean, of course, figurative as well as literal death. Could just be the end of something, or a change. The Devil represents dark desires," he says, and raises his eyebrows suggestively at Faolin and Nesta. "Sexuality, addiction, attachment. Vices. Together?" Hox takes another drink. "Certainly a less golden view than the present reading," he continues. "The end of something, requiring strength, and what will come is something unpleasant. You quite sure you wanna take him home?" Hox adds, gesturing towards Faolin, who makes a rude hand gesture at him. 

"He's been behaving very poorly," Nesta says, idly, tracing her finger around the rim of her glass. "Far too drunk." 

"I've been neglecting my lovely partner's needs," Faolin says immediately, taking the empty glass out of her hand. 

"Her need to get drunk enough to find you attractive?" Scyph interjects, and Faolin laughs again. 

"We can't have her sober up and realize she should dump me," Faolin says. "I'll return, darling," he says to Nesta, and kisses the side of her neck lightly. She shivers as he walks away. 

"He's always like this after he gets laid," Scyph confides in her. "His most charming self, really. Very good natured." 

"I did say he was adequate," Nesta comments, dryly, and Hox and Scyph both laugh again. She reaches down and taps the last card. "But Hox, isn't this our card for tonight? What's the Tower mean?" 

"Maybe we should draw you a new card for tonight," Scyph says, pushing the Tower back toward Hox, but he shakes his head. 

"We can't change it now," Hox says. "She pulled the card. It's her fortune for tonight, good or ill." 

"What's ill about it?" Nesta asks. 

"It's all a bunch of charlatans making money," Scyph says to her, as Hox puts the card back in front of her. "Don't listen to him."

"The Tower," Hox says, as Faolin starts back towards them with a drink in hand, "represents upheaval. Sudden change. Many view it as a disaster card." 

"And that's your fortune for tonight?" Faolin says, as Nesta takes her drink from him, sliding an arm back around her waist. 

"She was right," Scyph says, mournfully. "You are too drunk, Faolin." He taps the card. "It's going to affect your ability to perform. Poof! Disaster strikes." He laughs. 

"Don't you even joke about that, Scyph," Faolin says, raising a fist threateningly. "You two have ruined my prospects with your fortune-telling. Come, Nesta darling, let's leave them. Oh!" he says, brightening suddenly. "Let's do the whisper chamber!" 

He pulls Nesta in her golden dress to the star in the floor. "Stay here," he instructs, and disappears around the bar. Nesta finishes her drink, feeling the alcohol in her head, and looks up at the gently-curved ceiling. 

"Nesta," a voice whispers, sounding like it's right behind her, and she jumps, looking behind her, and then there is a wicked laugh she recognizes as Faolin's voice, invisisble. 

"How do you like the whisper chamber, darling?" he whispers, and though she cannot feel him the whisper is low, next to her ear. "Isn't it intimate? Think of all the things I will do to you, you glorious thing," he continues, the whisper with a barely-audible tone now.

Nesta tilts her head back, and whispers, so quietly she knows that no one next to her can hear her. "What will you do to me?" she asks, her voice so low it's almost silent, full of challenge. 

"Keep that dress on," Faolin whispers. "But we'll start, darling, with it pulled up around your waist. My mouth has business with your cunt, and I want to watch your face while I do it."

Color comes up into Nesta's face, and fire spreads across her body. "I'll believe it when I hear less talking and more doing," she says, quietly, and steps away from the star. Moments later Faolin collides with her, his hands going around her waist, and kisses her in front of the bar. 

They leave the bar. He fulfills his promise. Nesta, before she climaxes, looks down into his hazel eyes and thinks of someone else. 

\--- 

That night, with the blonde Fae in her bed, she dreams again of going under the dark water, of opening her eyes in the blackness and seeing Elain, watching Elain struggle and gasp for air and suck only water. In her dream Nesta reaches for her sister but she’s too far away, her desperate swimming ineffective. She reaches with her power, gathering it to her in silver strings, pulling deep in it, and throws her hands out to cast it out to Elain, to pull her up.

She wakes for once not to her screaming but Faolin’s. When she opens her eyes, the male is pinned against the far wall with a silver net of her power that’s audibly sizzling his flesh, burning lines into the plaster wall. Nesta starts screaming, too, pulling the power back towards herself, and Faolin falls in a heap to the floor. He is burned all over in a neat, regular grid that spares only his face. He meets her eyes, no color left in his face, and scrambles up and leaves the apartment without another word.

Nesta runs to the bathroom and throws up, violently, feeling her power coiling in her belly, watching red and brown chunks hit the porcelain, and then is sick again and again and again, in solids then semisolids then liquid that splatters horribly, then thick mucus, then thin bile, then blood, and when there’s absolutely nothing, nothing left she dry heaves until her whole body hurts and she’s whimpering on the floor of her bathroom, clutching her abdomen with both hands, tears streaming out of her eyes and the taste of acid in her nose and mouth.

She doesn’t know how long she lays on the cold floor of the bathroom. Some hours later she wakes up, her head aching from pressing on the cold tiles, her skin clammy, her hands shaking, her whole body smelling foul. All the things she spends so much energy not thinking about are haunting her—her father’s neck, cracking, Elain’s head, shoved under the dark water—and him, the one she tries to think about least of all, the way he folded a hand over her heart, the way his eyes never faltered as they met hers. She lays on the floor and cries, unable to stop herself. Nesta tries to drag herself to bed and makes it halfway across the floor before her strength gives out and she lays there, staring at her bed but unable to reach it. Later she wakes up again and drags a blanket down to the floor on top of her. She can’t say how long it’s been when she’s finally able to get up, crawl to the bathroom and clean herself up, painfully, stripping down and pouring cold water over herself in the tub to clean the sickness off. She can’t say how many of her tears are anger, are guilt, are pain, are loneliness, are just manifestations of the dry heaves that still occasionally come over her.

When she’s clean Nesta makes it to the bed and sleeps for a night and a day, without dreaming. When she wakes she can look at the scorch marks on the wall without vomiting. She pulls on a thick blue dress and gray boots and leaves her apartment, slower on the stairs than she’s ever been, and picks up a bowl of broth from a store on the corner. The thought of going back to the apartment makes her hands shake and so she sits on the back of the river, drinking in small sips that makes her stomach clench. She sits on the riverbank holding her soup as sunset crosses the sky, darkening to dusk.

Of course, out of all the times, that’s when Lucien finds her.

“Nesta?” He says, disbelieving, and when she turns around his face visibly blanches. “Nesta, what happened,” he says, coming to crouch next to her, and she lifts a hand to gesture him away.

“I’m just not feeling well,” she means to say, but what comes out, looking at Lucien's face, is “_I burned him_,” in a strangled voice, and then her stomach boils in a sudden ball of acid, and she’s sick in the grass. 

“Nesta, you are sick. I can take you to Feyre,” she hears Lucien say, sounding very far away, one hand on her back.

“No,” she hisses, surprisingly strong. “No, no, I have—“ but talking is too much. She has to stop, waiting for the nausea to subside, and Lucien stares into her face. He grabs her forearm.

“What the holy hell,” he mutters, but she gives him a look so full of venom that he holds up his hands. “Fine,” he says. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Home,” Nesta mutters.

“Which is where, exactly, for you now?” Lucien asks, raising one eyebrow at her. “Can you even walk?”

Nesta stands, unsteadily, and Lucien catches her before she falls. “This is ridiculous,” he mutters. “I should take you to the townhouse.”

“No,” Nesta says, and then puts an arm out, around him. “This way.”

Their walking lasts all of ten feet before she sways, and Lucien mutters a curse under his breath and picks her up.

“What happened, Nesta,” he asks, quietly, not meeting her eyes. “Who did you burn?”

Her grip tightens around his arm but she says nothing. She directs him back to her shitty apartment building, to the three rooms on the top floor that are hers, where she carefully unlocks all three locks herself.

Lucien wrinkles his nose when the door opens. “So you’ve been sick for a while, I take it,” he says, dryly, but Nesta is already sinking down on the couch. “Do you need a hand to bed?” he asks, and she’s too tired to deny it, nodding once, and he picks her up again, carrying her to the bedroom. “Holy hell,” he mutters again, seeing the state of the bedroom, but Nesta is asleep as soon as she hits the bed.

Lucien surveys the room, turning to take in the far wall. The burn mark in the plaster looks like a net, with a clear person-shaped outline in the middle. He uses a quick spell to clean up the mess of vomit off the floor, then turns back to the wall and stares at it for several long minutes.

\----- 

When she wakes up, the sun is down again. Amren is in her bedroom, sitting in a single chair next to the bed, turning pages in a book.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Amren says, without looking at her. Nesta looks past her, to the burn marks on the wall.

“Who—“ she begins to ask, her voice hoarse, but at the noise Lucien appears at the bedroom door, leaning against the door frame. “Ah,” Nesta says. “I was sure that you weren’t really here.”

“Luckily for you he was,” Amren says, still not looking at her, flipping another page in her book. “Let me guess: you manifested your power in an uncontrolled way, hurt someone, and then had a severe reaction?”

“His name was Faolin,” Nesta whispers, looking down at the bed.

Lucien raises an eyebrow. Amren finally closes her book.

“I’m going to be blunt with you, girl,” Amren says.

“I’m so surprised,” Lucien mutters, and Amren shoots him a dark look.

“I didn’t know what would happen to your powers after the Cauldron was shattered and remade,” Amren continues. “I thought there was a small chance that they might go away. This is clearly not the case.”

“What kind of powers are we talking about?” Lucien asks.

“Death powers, I believe,” Amren says, absently, and Lucien pales. “As does Bryaxis, who would know.”

“You talked to Bryaxis?” Nesta asks, but Amren gives her a sharp gaze.

“Stop interrupting, both of you,” she says. “Yes, I did. Because after this one told me what happened where he found you—“ she points at Lucien without looking at him “—I gave up on the idea that your powers had gone and went with theory two, which is that they are growing.”

“Cauldron help us,” Lucien says, not quite under his breath.

“I believe it already has,” Amren says, dryly, then turns her attention back to Nesta, who is still refusing to meet her eyes. “Powers like this will build up over time, Nesta. You need to let them vent, so to speak, or they will explode. As you seem to already have discovered.”

Silence settles over the room. Amren crosses her legs, looking deliberately at Nesta. After several minutes, Nesta looks up at her.

“How am I supposed to safely vent death powers,” she asks, in a flat voice.

Amren sighs. “I think there are many things coalescing around you, girl,” she says, and it is the gentlest that Nesta has ever heard her voice. “The souls will keep coming to you.”

“The what now,” Lucien says. Amren snorts.

Nesta colors faintly. “It’s not your business,” she snaps.

“Oh, sorry, I thought when I picked you up half-dying and lying on the ground in public, when I cleaned some truly disgusting bodily fluids from your apartment, when I found Amren and dragged her over here, it entitled me to a few answers,” Lucien says, irritably.

“Guiding the souls should use the death magic,” Amren says, ignoring Lucien. She smiles grimly at Nesta. “Looks like you have a new job. Whenever you figure out how to do it.”

“I found a book,” Nesta mumbles, but she’s staring down at her blanket.

“So you’re some kind of a death spirit helping souls to the afterlife,” Lucien says, glancing between them.

“Clever boy. Look how much you can pick up with no one explaining to you,” Amren says to him, her voice saccharine. Lucien rolls his eyes. 

“I’m hungry,” Nesta whispers.

“Oh look, that’s my cue,” Amren says, standing up. “I make a truly terrible nurse.”

“What, am I supposed to do it?” Lucien asks, as she brushes past him and walks towards the door.

“Suit yourself,” Amren says, breezily, as she leaves, and leaves Lucien scowling at the front door. He turns to scowl at Nesta, but the scowl takes on a different cast as he looks at her. She must look bad, she supposes. She feels bad.

“So you.....not living with Feyre or Elain, these days?” Lucien asks, shoving his hands awkwardly in his pockets. Nesta closes her eyes.

“I do not need the twenty questions,” she hisses. “Can you please get some kind of food?”

\--- 

By the time Lucien returns with soup and bread she is wearing a gray dressing robe over her nightgown. It takes her too long to walk over to unlock the door, though it doesn't stop her from scowling at him as he shuts the door and takes food over to the small table. 

"So you look like hell," Lucien says, pouring soup into a mug and handing it to her. She sits across from him and accepts it--something broth-based, with noodles and vegetables floating in it. 

Nesta gives him a flat look and he raises an eyebrow. "I get it, you're prickly and unapproachable," he says. "Proud, easily offended, etc. But at least trade me a few answers for food." 

"Fine," Nesta says, her voice tired, and takes a sip of soup. 

"It seems like there's some...magic trouble," Lucien says, carefully. He doesn't mention the still-present burn marks on the wall of her bedroom. 

"Apparently," Nesta says. "That's new." 

"Have you been using your powers at all?" 

"No," Nesta snaps. "Because apparently if I had, that wouldn't have happened." 

Lucien nodded, buttered a slice of bread. "So...who was it?" he asks. 

Nesta sets her cup down, and does not meet Lucien's eyes. "His name was Faolin," she mutters. 

Lucien nods, carefully. "So you and Cassian--?" 

"I don't ask about your personal life, do I?" Nesta fires back, looking up. "Do I come in here and ask you how your mating bond is going?" 

"Okay," Lucien says, wincing. "Okay, sorry. So not a thing, then." 

"Not a thing," she confirms. 

"But you did say the words 'mating bond,'" Lucien says, carefully, trying to hold the butter knife as non-threateningly as possible. 

"I don't know," Nesta says, tired. 

"Okay," Lucien says, again. "So this...Faolin?" 

"Also not a thing," Nesta says, and pinches the bridge of her nose. "There are no relationships," she says. 

"There's nothing wrong with casual sex," Lucien says, quietly, and Nesta sighs. 

"Clearly I don't think there is, since I'm engaging in so much of it," she snaps. Lucien raises his eyebrows and nods silently. "And don't give me any bullshit about--him, either." 

"Well, it's not like I can talk," offers Lucien. "It's not like I see my mate either." 

"Good," Nesta says. "Leave my sister alone," but her heart isn't in it. There's a brief moment of silence, and Lucien chews his bread quietly. Nesta takes a sip of soup. 

"How is Elain?" Lucien asks, and his voice cracks on the word _Elain_. Nesta pretends not to notice. 

"Well, the last time I saw her," she says, softly. "She's getting better little by little." 

"When was that?" Lucien asks, and Nesta frowns. 

"I don't...see them often," she says, after a silence. 

"Ah," Lucien says. "Family falling-out?" 

"Something like that," Nesta mutters. 

"You don't need to explain it to me," Lucien says dryly. "My brothers tried to kill me quite recently, if you'll remember." 

"I do," Nesta says. 

There's another silence. Lucien finishes his piece of bread, takes a noisy slurp of soup. 

"I'm not...mad at them," Nesta says, but that sounds like a lie even to her. She shifts in her chair. "We just need some time apart." 

"Okay," Lucien says. 

"There's not really a place for me in that house," Nesta says. 

"Okay," Lucien says again. 

"I couldn't stand to wake Elain anymore," she mumbles, staring at the table. "With the...the nightmares. She couldn't take it." 

"How often do you have nightmares?" he asks, gently. 

Nesta shrugs. "Less if I drink." 

Lucien mimics her shrug. "I mean, it's not healthy, but it makes sense," he says. "I'm not here to reprimand you." He hesitates, then sets down his spoon. "What happened with....that?" he asks, nodding towards the bedroom. 

Nesta is quiet for a long time. Lucien doesn't pick up his spoon. She watches steam come off the top of her mug of soup, stares at her hands loosely curled around the mug, the pattern on her gray dressing gown where the sleeves touch the table, the shaft of light that falls on the table. 

"I had a nightmare," she says softly. "I usually have nightmares. Usually about Elain. This one was, too. She was drowning--in that water," she says, and Lucien's fist clenches. "I was swimming for her but I couldn't reach her. I threw out my power in a net to try to grab her, and when I woke up..." she pauses, but Lucien does not speak. "It was burning his flesh," she says, her voice almost too low to hear. "I could smell it. He was screaming." 

"What happened to him?" Lucien asks. 

"I don't know," Nesta says. "When I realized what was happening I pulled my power back and he ran out. I...was sick, after that. I don't know what happened." 

"He's High Fae?" Lucien asks, and Nesta nods mutely. "Well, it's been...at least five days," Lucien says. "He's probably healed by now." 

"But what if you can't heal from my magic," Nesta says, quietly, not looking at him. 

Lucien stares at her for a few seconds. "I'll find out," he says, and Nesta looks up at him. 

"Thank you," she says. 

There is another awkward silence. Nesta drinks from her cup of broth, leaving the noodles and vegetables behind. 

"I have nightmares about that, too," Lucien says, and Nesta's eyes flicker to him. He's not looking at her. "About Elain. About seeing her go under the water." He pauses. "It was the worst few minutes of my life." 

Nesta bites back the sharp retort on her tongue at the raw pain on his face. "Me too," she says, instead. 

"Thank you for caring about her," Lucien says, still not looking at her. "For being with her when I couldn't." 

"You still can't, right?" Nesta says, and Lucien shoots her a death glare. She raises an eyebrow. "Too soon?" 

Lucien laughs, humorlessly. "You're a riot," he says. "That's your favorite, right? Kicking someone right where it hurts?" 

Nesta dips her head a fraction. "It's reflex," she mutters, then looks somewhat ashamed. "I'm sorry." 

"Okay," Lucien says. "We're not friends, Nesta. Good natured ribbing is fine, but the key phrase there is 'good-natured', something which implies you have a 'good nature.' " He puts up appropriate air quotes and Nesta rolls her eyes. "But thank you for apologizing," he says. "I get the sense they're rare." 

Nesta coughs and takes another drink of her soup. "Where are you staying now, anyway?" Nesta asks, looking over at him. 

Lucien's eyes slide away from her gaze. "Oh, I've been traveling around," he says. "I spend a fair bit of time with Jurien, and Vassa. Just...out. There's not really a place for me." 

"Feyre won't take you in?" Nesta says, too much bite in her voice on the word _Feyre._

"She manipulated me more than anyone," Lucien says, anger in his voice and his tone low, meeting her gaze. "I understand that she had her reasons. I even think they were good ones. But it doesn't make it feel any less shitty." 

"Well, welcome to the club," Nesta says, her voice small. 

They eat in silence for a while. "Are you staying at the townhouse?" Nesta asks, after a while. 

"I..I don't think I'm exactly ready for that," Lucien says. "It's very hard now, to be around her without being with her." 

Nesta nods. Then: "You could stay here," she says. 

"Here?" 

"On the couch," Nesta clarifies, her cheeks turning red. "I'm not trying to seduce my sister's mate, for gods' sake." 

"And apparently I'm trying to start rumors that I'm sleeping with every Archeron sister except the one I'm mated to," Lucien mutters. 

"With Feyre?" Nesta asks, scandalized. 

"I've never slept with Feyre," Lucien clarifies, irritated. "But she fostered that rumor, when it served her purposes. At Spring Court. When she was trying to make Tamlin...jealous. Set up situations to make it appear that way." 

"People think I'm the cruel one," Nesta says. "But Feyre is ruthless." 

"Quite," Lucien agrees, his mouth twisting. 

"Well, if I can help out anyone my sister fucked over in some way, feel free to have the couch," Nesta says. She reaches in her pocket and takes the door keys. "You can copy those," she says. "One is...locked to me, magically. I...I don't know how to change it, but if you can, feel free." 

"How much magic can you do?" Lucien asks, picking up the keys. 

"My magic isn't like other Fae," Nesta says. "I can't even make Fae light. It's...it's very frustrating, having to rely on someone else to do all the basic magic for me." 

"I'll see what I can do," Lucien says. "And if you need any basic magic, let me know. I am a High Lord's son, after all, for all the great joy that's brought into my life." 

"Thanks," Nesta says. She finishes her broth, leaving the solid soup components in the mug. "And thanks for the food." 

"I'll look into Faolin," Lucien says, standing up and taking the dishes to the sink. 

"I met him at the Full Moon Bar," Nesta says, as Lucien picks up the keys. "You might start there." 

Lucien nods and pockets the keys. "I'll be back in a while," he says, and leaves. 

Nesta sits at the table by herself for a long time after. The clock in her apartment puts it at around midnight, though that certainly doesn't matter much for business hours in the City of Starlight, and Nesta's used to living her days flipped, anyway. She stands up and takes a book back to bed, and starts to read. 

\---

At dawn she leaves her house, stepping into the streets with her second set of keys, wearing a high neck dress of dark red silk. The sunrise is gray and red, low on the horizon. She takes the winding streets towards her bookstore. 

Halfway there she knows, without being able to say how, that someone is following her. She doesn't increase the speed of her step, doesn't turn around. When she gets to the door of the shop, she pulls out her keyring and unlocks the door, and then turns around to face the person behind her. 

It is the tall Fae, again, the one with gray skin and the black eyes, the shift that falls to the ground in a black rectangle. Nesta stands still and studies it, careful to keep her hands loose at her sides. The creature stops, maintaining distance from her. 

"I am lost," it says again, its voice high and reedy sounding. 

"I do not know how to help you," Nesta says. 

The fae stands in the street, unmoving. Nesta stares at it. 

"Would you like to come in?" she asks finally, opening the door to the stairs. 

The Fae does not answer, but walks up the stairs ahead of Nesta. She shuts the door behind them. 

Upstairs the chandeliers, responding to her presence, begin to glow softly. They don't glow for the fae in front of her, who stands in the middle of the room, looking at the empty bookshelves. 

"What is your name?" she asks, softly. 

"You know," the Fae says, turning slowly to look at her. "Why do you have these empty shelves?" 

"I collect stories," Nesta says. 

"Add mine," the Fae says, and it pours into Nesta's mind suddenly, in a rush of images--Hest was a cave-dweller, deep in the mountains, dwelling in large ancient and terrible forests, among craggy rocks and sharp, impossibly steep cliffs of black stone. She gets a whirlwind impression of bats tearing through caves, of a deer on a lush green field, bleeding into the grass, of water so cold that her skin is hurting, of sharp talons and Fae with bat-like wings and sharp swords and skin ripping--

"Please," Nesta gasps, leaning against the desk, and the rush of images abate. She breathes heavily for a few moments, then looks up. Hest is standing in front of her, his black eyes unreadable but his head tilted down to look at her. Nesta inhales, then exhales. 

"You need to tell your story," she says. 

"Yes," Hest agrees. 

"Write it down," Nesta says, suddenly. "Write your story. For the library." 

Hest looks at her, face still unreadable. "And then you will take me to the river, death-god," he says, quietly. 

"Yes," Nesta says. 

Hest stares into her eyes, black meeting gray, and nods slowly. 

The bookstore, at this time, isn't yet set up the way it will be later. Nesta doesn't yet have the black writing desk that faces the central window, looking over the black and silver tree, where the rest of her spirits will write their stories. This, the first story for her collection, is written at her desk, next to the stairs, by the tall, gray-skinned Hest, whose irises and pupils are indistinguishable, who seems not to blink as he writes slowly, carefully, line after line.

Nesta watches, for a while, and then sits on the red chaise lounge, staring out the window. She watches sunlight play on the silver-barked, black-leafed tree in front of the shop, and without realizing it drifts to sleep with her cheek against the red velvet, her forehead against the windowsill. She does not dream of her sisters, or the hut, or the Cauldron, or the dark water that fills her dreams every night. In this dream she is in Hest's memories, deep in a cave with rich deposits that she can identify by tasting the air; the tangy limestone, the acidic marble, the bitter sandstone. She cannot see well, her eyes enormous, pupils wide to catch any spare ray of light that might sink down into the cave. She drinks from streams so cold they hurt her teeth, water that tastes like nothing she's ever had. She lives in the dark until she meets them, the Fae that are here to mine this cave, that bring light so bright she cannot make out their face, the Fae that bring her to the surface, where everything is in colors she has never known or seen, that make her eyes hurt to look at. Many different kinds of Fae, then, back and forth until she comes to Fae with wings like the bats she knows, who live among those impossibly sheer black cliffs, a society only possible among creatures with wings, and there she is taken back to a dark room, and for these Fae she sorts rocks, tasting them and sniffing them and setting them aside for some mysterious purpose. They keep her in chains, in the dark, these Fae with wings like bats, who she only sees briefly. She hates the chains, and hates more the Fae who put them on her. Time passes in blurs, in skips and starts, accelerating then braking, the cool safety of the dark and the rocks, the pain of the bright light, of the colors. She remembers a bright red bird in a square of sunlight, a deer she hunts in a vivid wood, cutting its heart on lush grass, the bright opaque crimson, the emerald green. She eats its meat with relish, the blood bright and tangy, the flesh sweet and steaming. Time blurs again, and again, forward and backward, pulling ore out of rocks, working it into metal. She follows the army to a battlefield larger than anything she has seen, and she dies there, in a flash of light that obliterates her vision, that obliterates herself, when a supply wagon is blown up by magic. But even in that obliteration, her spirit remains, clinging to the dust of the metal, hatred of her captors that follows their blood-soaked remains home. 

When Nesta wakes it is almost sunset, the low sun illuminating the red veins in the black leaves of the trees outside the window, shining through the sheer pink curtains slantwise, casting shadows onto empty bookshelves and across her red dress, across the red velvet chaise. She lifts her head and looks to the desk, where Hest is writing the last sentence of his story. 

"You were an Illyrian captive," Nesta says, quietly.

Hest does not answer. 

He sets down the pen, and looks at the page, at the drying ink, and after a few moments when the ink is dry, adds it to the pile of other pages. When the pages are complete, the sun has set. 

"It is done, death-god," Hest says, turning to face her. "My story is told." 

"I will save it," Nesta says. 

"Lead me to the river," Hest says. 

This is not magic that anyone has ever shown her, but she doesn't have a choice, anymore. She thinks of the pages of Acheron, of the instructions that can only be remembered once she has made a bargain with a spirit. But she made a bargain, and she can see them clearly, and now she knows what to do. 

Nesta stands, straightening her red dress, and walks to the stairs, staring at the door at the bottom of the stairs. She closes her eyes and reaches into herself, into the corners where she keeps her power. It feels like she is very small, standing on the surface of an enormous body of water, and she can't see the end. The power crackles around her, in the air, in the water, lapping at her feet, unimaginably deep. With trembling hands, she gathers it slowly to herself, a hundred spider-silk threads that come together in her hands. She opens her eyes and focuses on the door, and then puts her hands together in front of her, palms together. She pulls her hands apart, and when her hands come apart the power is there, in white-silver lines, no thicker than a spider's silk, that are like liquid light on her vision. She pulls the threads up and down, overlaying the door, pulling them down over the entrance until they form a tight woven curtain. And then, not knowing how, she reaches her hand towards it. She hesitates, her hand before the curtain of light, and then closes her eyes and thinks of the dark water. Her hand twists, and the threads of power follow it, twisting up into a gentle knot that hovers over the doorknob. 

"It is ready," she says, when she is sure the door goes where she needs it to. She stands back, away from the stairs. 

Hest walks past her, onto the stairs, and then turns to meet her eyes. "Thank you," he says, and Nesta lowers her own head in an accepting nod. 

Hest walks down the stairs and reaches for the door. He touches the knob, the knot of bright magic, and opens the door. 

On the other side, Nesta gets only the briefest glimpse of a a shoreline, of an overcast sky, of grainy sand, of dark water, lapping at the edge. Hest stands on the sand, looking into the water, and as he steps forward the door closes. 

Nesta pulls the magic from the door and back into herself. Her hands are only shaking a little bit. She quietly gets her keys, shoves them in the pocket of her red dress, and leaves the bookstore, the lights dimming to nothing as she shuts the same door that Hest used. She steps out into the familiar street and lets out a quavering breath. 

She goes straight to the nearest bar. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Feyre, our canon narrator, must be forgiven for not ever mentioning important books in Prythian because she was actually illiterate. I am still disgruntled about it  
-I made a floorplan of her [bookstore and apartment ](https://abigail-nicole.tumblr.com/post/188390097226/nestas-bookstore-apartment-for-the-books-of-the) because I Care That Much. You're all welcome  
-there is [a playlist to go with this story](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02WeNDUrzsFgVIFjcZgP4l?si=V1vCS9GwQaeU9bK_2awA4Q) also  
-yes, the book Acheron is loosely modeled on The Book Of The Dead, sorry not sorry  
-I dislike writing with original characters...if I wanted to write with original characters I personally would not write fanfiction. But canonically Nesta sleeps with so many random people and we know so little about her that I had to flesh out a few. Faolin means little wolf, Hox is named after Hox genes, and Scyph comes from scyphozoa, which are true jellyfish.  
-I wanted a theme of "fortune telling methods" to show up as games in the spirit of Nesta's "stones and bones" cynicism. I know nothing about the I Ching and just read the wikipedia. In that spirit I will also slander tarot cards, runes, and any other fortune telling method I come across that seem interesting. For what it's worth, this was a real Tarot spread I pulled from Major Arcana as I wrote this and I didn't pick cards to fit the scene specifically. I wish I could take credit for The Tower immediately foreshadowing the disaster with Faolin, but you'll just have to believe me when I said it happened a) after I wrote the disaster scene and b) without me picking cards purposefully.  
-yes, sir Illyrian war-god will be appearing in this film JUST WAIT


	3. Last Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Nesta drinks with Lucien, runs into Cassian, has some meaningful sex for once, and reacts poorly

Things accelerate quickly, after that.

Word spreads, silently, throughout the city, in ways that the living cannot fathom. 

_There is another. There is another. There is a way out. _

They gather, through the winding streets of gray cobblestones. Towards the solitary tree with silver-white bark, with leaves so dark red they look black, towards a single dark blue door next to a velvet window display. They hover, without touching, without speaking. 

Living Fae do not notice them. They do not think about why they cross the street on that particular intersection. The owner of the clothing store becomes irritated she is losing business. She never sees anyone go in or out of the door that goes to the upstairs room, but nevertheless she becomes suspicious, trying to catch Nesta doing something illegal. There is never any noise from upstairs. 

The dead gather, around the tree, around the dark blue door. 

\--- 

When she returns to the apartment Lucien is sleeping on the couch. He opens one eye as the door opens. 

"You're back," he says, without getting up. He's using her dark blue blanket but rolled up his coat as a pillow. "Where have you been?" 

"What?" asks Nesta, sinking into the chair across from him. He cocks his head at her. 

"Twenty four hours is a long time for someone who could barely stand up yesterday," he says. 

"Twenty four--what?" Nesta asks, looking at him. He opens his other eye. 

"Where were you?" he asks. 

"Nowhere," Nesta mumbles, automatically on the defensive, then says, "I just went to my bookstore--but there was a spirit there." 

"Is this one of the spirits you're supposed to be guiding now?" Lucien asks, interested, and sits up a little bit. 

"Yes," Nesta says, briefly. She rubs her eyes. "I....I figured it out, I guess." 

"Figured what out?" 

Nesta waves her hands, pulling her fingers together and then apart, and as she pulls them apart, silver threads appear between her fingertips, burning white lines in the air that hurt to look at. "How to make a door, I guess," she says, and drops her hands, letting the light dissipate. "So he left me his story, and in return I made him a door." 

Lucien watches her, curiously, but she leans back, silent. "Well, that's an explanation, and not enigmatic at all," he says, finally, and lays back on his rolled-up coat pillow. 

Nesta scowls. "There are more pillows in the closet," she says. 

"I didn't want to pry." 

"Well, consider that permission." 

Lucien nodded. "I found him," he says, and Nesta sit up straighter in her chair. 

"Is he--" she begins. 

"He's...fine," Lucien says. "Scared, I guess." 

"Did the burns..." Nesta starts to ask, but stops. 

"They were still there," Lucien says, quietly. 

Nesta bites her lip and looks away from him. Guilt washes over her and her vision blurs. "Dammit," she whispers, quietly, her voice strangled, and Lucien pointedly doesn't look at her. 

"Amren has a theory," she says, a few minutes later, when her voice is under control, "that I have powers like the Weaver did." 

Lucien raises an eyebrow, his golden eye moving in place. "Well, have you had the sudden urge to skin me and use my life-force to prolong your own?" he says, lightly, and she gives a strangled laugh. 

"Skin you? Maybe," she says, and looks down at her hands. "But maybe it won't heal. If it's like her power, maybe it won't." 

"It's just scars," Lucien says. "He's not permanently injured. He lost no limbs or senses. It's just skin scars. Painful, but eventually will heal. It could be worse," he adds, and his golden eye moves again. 

Nesta sighs. "I could go for another drink," she says. 

"You just got home," Lucien says. Nesta stares at him uncomprehendingly. He gives up. "Fine," he says, and swings his legs over so he's sitting up. He unrolls his coat. 

\---

After Nesta dresses herself, in a floor-length white gown that glows faintly in the moonlight, they walk through the dark streets of Velaris. Nesta eventually leads the way down several sets of stairs until they are underneath a large, imposing black building. The door is a grid of black metal, and the sign is a black disc, backlit by red-white edge light. Outside the bar stand a pair of imposing Fae with four arms and horns like deer, one male, one female, wearing white robes, and they nod knowingly to Nesta as they let Lucien and her enter. 

"Where are we?" Lucien asks, raising his voice, because suddenly the room is louder. 

"Eclipse Bar," Nesta says, as they pass through a foyer into a bar that drops away beneath them in a grand staircase. Black marble stairs leading down from the entry split to hug around a bar that is lit all in red and white lines. Another bar mirrors it on the other end of the long room. Circular balconies overhang the space, suspended by magic, with ladder made of red rope dangling from each one. A raised dais in the center of the floor, edged again in red and white light, has a trio of females dressed all in white who are singing and dancing. The music is dark and insistent, the dancing is synchronized but each dancer a half-beat off the next. 

"Well, this is the kind of decadent vice I expected from the Night Court," Lucien says. 

"Velaris does have its good points," Nesta agrees, and Lucien cocks his head as if to say _that wasn't what I meant_ but doesn't say anything. She walks down the stairs, dress spreading out in a pale puddle behind her as she walks, and he follows her. 

Nesta orders for both of them, a drink so strong that Lucius makes a face when he sips it. Nesta takes a large swallow, tilting her head back. The underlit bar catches the gold in her hair, the line of her neck. "Not cold enough," she says, then shrugs and takes another large drink. 

"You weren't kidding about the drinking, were you," Lucien says, leaning back against the bar. Nesta raises an eyebrow. 

"Do you want to have a drinking contest?" she asks, cooly. 

"Gods no," Lucien says, hurriedly, taking another drink. He lifts his eyes and the expression on his face changes. 

"What?" Nesta asks, turning around, and catches sight of Azriel, sitting at a table, holding a glass of wine. He looks at her steadily. "Gods," she mutters, echoing Lucien, then finishes her drink. 

"How are you already done?" Lucien asks, as she motions for another from the bartender. 

"Let's go see what he wants," Nesta says, ignoring the question as she finishes her drink. 

"Not characteristic of the spymaster to frequent high-concept bars in the Night Court?" Lucien mutters, following her. 

Nesta snorts. "If Azriel were going to frequent bars I would know it by now," she says, as she takes a seat across from him. 

Azriel’s eyes meet hers. "Hello, Nesta," he says, and takes a small sip of wine. He turns his head towards Lucien, nods. "Lucien. So this is what you've been doing since you go to town?" 

"Visiting the in-laws," Lucien says, dryly, and Nesta glares at him. 

"What do you want, Azriel?" Nesta says, taking a larger drink of her cocktail. 

"I was just curious as to why you had bought a bookstore," he says. "I thought the easiest way to find out would be to ask you."

"Amren didn't tell you? It was her idea," Nesta retorts. Azriel raises an eyebrow. 

"Amren, for some reason, shows a larger degree of loyalty towards you than expected, and does not report to me on your affairs," Azriel says. "From my investigations, it seems that you're not yet open to the public." 

"No," Nesta says shortly. "I'm not." 

"Are you willing to tell me why you procured this establishment?" 

"Why do you care? Am I a threat?" Nesta lifts her chin. "Am I somehow here to undermine your High Lord and his wife?" 

"Merely curious," Azriel says. "I thought you'd also like to know how Feyre's pregnancy is going." 

Nesta closes her eyes. "You thought wrong," she says. Azriel raises an eyebrow. 

Lucien coughs and sips his drink. "Well," he says, "I mean, I for one am curious--" 

"You saw Feyre earlier today," Azriel says, and Lucien blushes. Nesta turns to glare at him. "And," Azriel adds, "also neglected to mention that you had seen Nesta, or that you were in town longer than a day or two." He turned his gaze back to Nesta. "I'm not exactly sure why you've inspired such loyalty in your friends, Nesta." 

"You wouldn't understand," Nesta says, turning her gaze back to Azriel. "Feyre and I have always fought." 

"Refusing to hear news of your nephew seems like more than sibling rivalry," Azriel says, lightly. 

"You Fae and your high family drama," Nesta retorts. "Where's your family, Azriel? Where's Rhys's family? Where's Cassian's family? Oh, wait, that's right. You're all estranged. I don't see why my not getting along with my sister is so incomprehensible to you males." 

"Maybe it makes us value the family we have even more," Azriel says, quietly. 

"Stop projecting onto me," Nesta says, and finishes her drink. "Stop projecting all the happy relationships you wish you had. Feyre and I are two different people." 

"And what about--Elain?" Azriel asks, softly. Lucien stiffens, and Nesta's fist curls around her drink, her knuckles turning white. 

"Leave," she says, quietly, turning to stare at the Shadowsinger. 

"She misses you," Azriel says. "She asked me to pass that along. She hopes that you're well." He stands up, leaving his mostly-full glass of wine. "Sorry to bother you," he says, politely, and bows to them before turning to leave. 

Nesta does not watch him leave the bar, her eyes absently staring at the female singers on stage. Lucien finishes his first drink. When he sets it down on the table, Nesta picks up Azriel's glass of wine and downs it. 

"Serious drinking for serious people," Lucien says, apparently to himself. Nesta surprises him by letting out a small snort of laughter. He looks horrified. "Oh no, I got a reaction out of her," he says. "Is this drunk Nesta? Does she show human emotion?" 

"Shut up and get me another drink," Nesta says. "Another of the same." 

Lucien obliges. "Would it really be so bad?" he asks, setting the glass down across from her, taking the opposite seat. "To see her?" 

"She's happier without me," Nesta says, taking a large drink of it. "She's healing better without me, without my night terrors waking her up, without my--" she gestures, vaguely, towards all of herself, without seeming to realize what she's doing. "Without all this to remind her. She can move on. I can't." 

Lucien is silent to that and takes another drink himself. "Alcohol does change you," he says, after a moment. "I mean, an honest answer to a question? And laughing at my jokes?" 

Nesta throws an ice cube at him. He grins as he catches it, and pops it into his mouth. "Shut up," she says. 

"Yes, bars, where people come to sit and stare at each other in silence," Lucien agrees, and Nesta throws another ice cube at him. 

\--- 

She's pleasantly drunk by midnight, her hair down, in one of the floating balconies, her feet hanging over the red rope ladder. The edge of her white skirt flutters, starkly pale against the dark crowd below. The musicians are different now, playing music that is playful, pulsing, and the whole bar is now underlit in red and white, throwing shadows across her face. She watches Fae dance beneath her, a writhing mass of limbs and faces. A dizzying array of empty glasses sits on the balcony next to her, and a half-empty bottle of wine.

"What is he doing, anyway?" Nesta is saying to Lucien. "Where does he go?" 

"Listen, last year was the first time I even knew this city existed," Lucien said, gesturing a little too broadly around him. "Night Court borders have been mysterious for centuries, longer. Damned if I know what happens in the mountains of Illyria." 

"There are tall cliffs," Nesta says. She's sitting with her head against the railing, her face illuminated in white by the crowd from below, her lips dark with lipstick and wine. She takes another drink, finishing the glass, and sets it down beside the other glasses. She leans back, tilting her head towards the ceiling, and lifts her hands up. "Tall, black cliffs," she says, gesturing. "Straight, straight up. A whole, whole city built for things with wings. They were." 

"They were what?" Lucien asks, drinking directly from the wine bottle. 

"Well, they gave that up, y'know," Nesta says, gesturing vaguely again. "The females, right? They clip their wings. But I saw them."

"Saw what?" Lucien asks, trying to follow her hands with his eyes. 

"The old Illyrian cities," Nesta says, sketching them out in the air in front of her. "Before they used to clip their wings. You couldn't, you couldn't get anywhere if you couldn't fly. Was...defense, probably." 

Lucien is lying back, his hair spread out on the floor. "What," he says, but doesn't look around, and yawns. "You went?" 

"Imagine--imagine the tallest buildings," Nesta says, gesturing up, lifting her hand over her head, pausing to watch the way a light catches the spaces between her fingers. "But they're made of cliffs. Cliffs so deep you couldn't see the bottom of them, trees that come in colors that trees don't come in. Cliffs made of black marble, polished smooth so long ago, by the river that used to be there. And you're, you're walking along a narrow path, on the side of the mountain, when you see it." 

Nesta her hand over, to stare at her palm. "I don't think they even live there anymore," she murmurs, to herself. "It was empty when Hest saw it." She drops her hand, following her fingers with her eyes until they fall into the crowd of Fae below her. "I want to see it," she whispers, to herself. In her memory, the tall, polished spires are blacker than black, the sky bluer than blue, the memories from Hest more colorful, more real than her own memories. The impossible city, too dark and shining to be real, smooth planes and arches and impossible angles, a city made for people who flew, who didn't walk. 

"I don't even know its name," she says, out loud. She becomes aware of a silence, and turns her head. "Lucien?" 

He's asleep, hand fallen by his head, dagger loosely cradled in his hand. He lets out a gentle snore as Nesta watches. She sighs, and reaches for a glass, frowning to find it empty. She reaches for another, and another, finding them all empty, and then finishes the wine bottle. 

She can feel them, outside the bar, without even seeing them. There are four. She could close her eyes and point to them. They exert a pressure on the edge of her mind, like cold spots in a warm pool. The presence is dulled by the alcohol. She's probably drunker than she can remember being since before she met Faolin, and that thought itself makes her reach for another drink, only to find them all still empty. 

"I can't believe you fell asleep. I have to go get my own wine?" Nesta asks Lucien, to no answer. She frowns again. "Really out of wine?" she says, to herself, turning the bottle upside down. She looks back toward the bar, toward the large black staircase, but she can feel them there. Not drunk enough, she thinks. 

Awkwardly, she descends the red rope ladder, her white dress flashing in the red and white lights. As she steps off the ladder, she can feel music vibrating through the floor, humming up through her legs and arms, pounding at her head as she winds through the crowd. Normally she's on the lookout for winged Fae, a conquest she can't yet claim, but tonight the music and the alcohol narrow her vision. 

"Excuse me," she says, tapping the bar. "I need one--no, two, two--wine, bottles. Two bottles of wine, please," she amends, gesturing at the bartender. 

The bartender, a dark-skinned Fae with dark red hair made darker by the red light behind the bar, nods and reaches under the counter. 

"Hello, sweetheart," a low voice says, behind her, and Nesta's heart leaps into her throat. 

"Oh shit," she says, unable to tell if it's in her head or out loud, and turns around. It is him. 

He's not in his fighting garb, the siphons confined to the two on the back of his hands. He's wearing something she hasn't seen since he used to come visit her, every day, at the house of wind, a dark shirt that looks too soft for him. Her gaze travels up his body, lingering too long on his muscled thighs, the tight pants around his hips, the planes of his torso she can see through his shirt, the dark wings that are tucked in behind his shoulders, his neck, up his mouth, finally locking on the hazel eyes. He's the apex of all her fantasies and it's so irritating, the way she feels her core clench, just from looking at him. 

"Good to see you too, Nesta," Cassian says, his voice low, his eyes locked on hers. 

"Is it a special occasion?" Nesta asks, slurring her voice only a little. "Is it bring-your-favorite-Illyrian to work day?" 

He chuckles, his face breaking into a wide grin that makes her core clench. "Favorite?" he teases, leaning on the bar next to her. She's very aware of how close he's standing to her. 

"Spymaster, now you," she says, waving a hand. "Don't bring the High Lord around, please," she adds, wrinkling her nose.

"I might have heard you were here from Azriel," Cassian says, looking down at her.

She waves her hands. "I was just, just spending time with--the in-laws," she says, and starts cackling at her own joke. "But did you know," she says, tilting her head back, feeling the room tilt with her, "that I was just thinking of you? I met, I met a very interesting spi--a very interesting Fae," she says, and doesn't realize that she's angling her body towards his, that her hand has come to rest lightly on his forearm on the bar. "And they showed me--they told me. They'd been," she says, and the shirt is just as soft as she thought it was. She looks down at her fingers. "Soft," she says, absently, picking the fabric between her fingers. 

"How drunk are you?" Cassian asked, taking her hand in his. His hands are warm, and firm. She grips his fingers absently. 

"So many," she says, but looks back up in his eyes and smiles, a smile he's never seen from sober Nesta, warm and genuine and shining, as if she wants him, as if she's excited to see him. "So many!" she says, more expansively, and laughs. "But don't--don't interrupt me!" 

"Was I?" Cassian asks, gently. He feels like he's cheating, like he's skipped the hard steps, like he's come to the part where she stares at him like she wants him, and it hurts. 

"I was telling you a story," Nesta is saying, and now both her hands are clasping his forearm, her face serious and wide-eyed. "What's the name of that city?" 

"Which city, sweetheart?" he says, absently, drawing closer to her, drawing his wings around them. 

"The shining city," Nesta says, still looking up into his eyes. "On the cliffs of black stone, with the towers that pierce the clouds, with the impossible archways, on the river you can only hear but never see." 

Cassian is staring at her, his facial expression changing. "There's no way you could know that," he says, slowly. "What are you talking about?" 

"On the marble cliffs," she says, insistently. "Hest showed me. I saw it. It's a secret but he saw it, so I saw it, too. I don't know when it was, though. It might have been a long time ago." She looks down, at his hand holding onto hers, at her hands resting on his arm. 

"Where was the city?" Cassian asks her. He strokes the back of her hand with his thumb, and she closes her eyes at the touch. 

"Illyria, of course," she says, and his hand stills. 

"Lissos," he says, finally, his tone flat, and her eyes open to meet his. "How did you see Lissos, Nesta?" 

But she's shaking her head, pulling her hands back. "You're mad," she says, stepping away from him, then gasps and puts a hand to her head. "More," she whispers, her head turning towards the stairs. 

"What is it?" Cassian asks. He's immediately tense and alert, looking towards the stairs, but no one is there. A red curtain blocks the entrance to the street. 

"They're waiting for me," Nesta says, her voice is soft. "One more. Fuck!" She reaches for the fresh wine bottle and takes a long drink, gulping it down. 

"Who's waiting for you?" he asks, and she shakes her head. 

"I don't wanna talk about it," she says, cringing. "I don't want to talk to them. I can't do it right now." 

"It's okay," Cassian says, stepping closer to her. "Nesta, I think you've had enough to drink?" 

"Shut up," Nesta says, sounding for a moment like her more sober self, then she steps towards him, tilting her head up at him again, and puts a hand on his chest. "You--you what? You followed me here?" 

"Azriel told me," Cassian says, staring down at her hand on his chest. She frowns. 

"That's right, you said that." She picks up her wine and takes another long drink. "So you're looking for me?" she says. 

"I'm always looking for you," he says softly, unable to resist telling the truth. 

Nesta snorts. "Thass a lie," she says, slurring a little more than she had before. "I'm very easy to find." 

"If you want to be," Cassian says softly, but in a tone of agreement so that Nesta nods. 

"Yes," she says, but then frowns. "No! I'm here all the time. You--" she lifts her right hand from his chest, makes it into a fist, and gently sets it against his chest again. “You're gone, all the time. Gone tonight, gone tomorrow. Gone forever." 

Her hand against his chest is warm, so warm, it feels like all the heat from his body is being drawn there. "Do you want me to stay?" he asks, softly. 

Nesta's eyes start to fill with tears. "I don't deserve that," she says, and moves her hand back, steps away from him. She picks up the bottle of wine and clutches it, staring at him, and tears start to spill over. 

"Stop," Cassian says, reaching for her, "stop saying that, stop thinking that," and it doesn't matter if drunk Nesta is the Nesta he wishes he had, it doesn't matter if she'll hate him for it tomorrow, nothing matters at all except she's crying and she misses him, and then he takes her in his arms, holding her softly to his chest, her and her bottle of wine. 

She breathes into his chest. "Take me home," she says, in a small voice, and he wraps his arms tighter around her, cocooning them in his wings. 

"Okay," he says, gently.

\--- 

The night air is cold, and she shivers in her white dress so much that he puts an arm around her, walking through the streets of Velaris. The spirits don't approach her, with Cassian there, and she leans into the shelter of his wing, feeling his warmth against her side. He didn't manage to pry her bottle of wine out of her arms. Nesta tilts her head back to look at the sky, exposing the line of her throat. 

"I've, I've decided," she says, still slurring a little bit. "You're not really here." 

"I'm not?" Cassian says. She's against his side, sheltered by his wing. He leads them through the streets, towards Nesta's apartment. 

Nesta shakes her head. "No," she says, a little too loud. "Just another dream." 

"Do you dream about me?" he asks, teasing, but she frowns. 

"You always die in my dreams," she says, and her voice is so matter of fact Cassian feels his heart start to break. "On the floor of that throne room, with the blood pouring out on the stone, and your face looks--" she pauses, looking up at the stars, not looking at him. He gently touches the side of her face, guides her gaze back to him. 

"I'm sorry," he says, quietly. 

"Maybe you won't die in this dream," she says, absently, but her steps have slowed as her eyes search his face. She shivers suddenly and he accelerates their pace. 

"Here," Nesta says, abruptly, thrusting the wine bottle towards him. "Drink with me."

"You have far too much of a head start on me," Cassian says, but accepts the bottle. He drinks from it, feeling the warmth slide down into him. She smiles at him, again--that same radiant, genuine smile that makes his heart break, the one he knows she would never give him sober. The thought makes him take another, longer drink, and as he lowers the bottle he's aware that she's watching his throat. 

"Don't you want to fuck me?" she says, quietly, and at those words blood rushes into his cock, the ache so painful and sudden he catches his breath. But he keeps his tone light. 

"Getting ideas, sweetheart?" he asks, handing her the wine bottle. 

Her lips curve into a symmetric smile, different than the one before. This one is cruel, and dark, and makes him think of her lips on his cock. 

"I've already had ideas," she says, taking another drink. 

"Oh?" he says, keeping his tone light, but the muscles of his stomach are clenching, against his will. He picks up the pace. They're only two blocks from her apartment now. 

"You must know," Nesta says, and her hand around his waist. "They're all terrible. It's so hard--why do I have to think of you before I can come?" 

If he thought he was hard before, now his erection is painful. His eyes glitter as he looks at her. One block to the apartment. "Would you like to see if I can live up to that fantasy?" he asks, his voice low. 

Nesta bites her lip, looking thoughtful. "You're so good in my fantasies," she says, and her voice is not as slurred as it was before, deepened with lust. 

"You're drunk," he says, effort in his voice, pulling away from her. 

"Then drink more," Nesta says, handing him the wine bottle. "It doesn't count if we're both drunk." 

"Is that how it works?" Cassian asks, but drinks more from the wine bottle. As he finishes, he realizes how close she is standing to him, one hand around his back, one hand hovering near his face. He hardly dares to breathe as she runs her fingertips lightly down the side of his throat, brushing the ends of his hair, as her fingertips drop lower, running across his chest, and lower, onto the planes of his abdomen. He catches her hand with his. 

She looks up at him and smiles that slow, cruel, symmetric smile again, and when she leans into him her lips brush the side of his throat. A low noise escapes him as his fingers curl against her back. 

"Oh look," she says, stepping away from him. "Home." 

He looks up at her, the look on his face enough to make her laugh--the cruel, seductive laugh he knows so well. "Come inside," she says, this time, and maintains eye contact while he nods. 

They make it up the stairs without touching and Nesta unlocks the multiple locks on her front door, letting them in. There's no fire in the fireplace and the room is cold. 

"Allow me," Cassian says, moving towards the fireplace, and as he lights one Nesta picks up another bottle of wine. 

"Keep drinking," she says, bringing it to him, and he raises an eyebrow at her. 

"We're dangerously close to me taking advantage of you, sweetheart," he says, pushing her hand away gently. 

"You Illyrian bastard," she says, grabbing his hand forcefully. "Fine. Let's play a drinking game, then."

"You're too drunk," Cassian protests, though he doesn't move away from her touch. 

She raises an eyebrow at him. "My alcohol tolerance is extremely high," she says. "Truth. I'm drunk, oh, every other night." She takes a pull from the bottle, and hands it to him. "You go." 

Cassian hesitates, then takes the bottle. "I don't drink very much," he says. "Maybe once a week?" 

"Old man," she mutters, and he takes a drink, larger than hers. He can smell her, hitting it as hard as it ever has, overwhelming him with the desire to bury his face in her shoulder, to take her lips between his own, to push her body up against his. 

"I have a lot of very bad sex," Nesta says, looking him in the eyes, and that shouldn't make him aroused but he can't stop the way his cock gets harder at the sentence. She takes another drink, and hands it to him. 

"I haven't had sex in a long time," he says, quietly, still meeting her eyes, and takes another, larger drink. She smiles at that, again, that cruel, symmetric smile. 

"Do you fantasize about me, Cassian?" she asks, and it's the first time she's said his name all night and he can't stop himself from grabbing her hand, clutching it tightly, staring at her lips. 

"Is this a question game, now?" he asks, but takes another long drink. He can start to feel the alcohol, swimming up behind his gaze. He wasn't lying--he hasn't been truly drunk in a long time, hasn't let his guard down enough. Too much can happen while he's drunk, too much he couldn't control, and he doesn't want his fighting edge blunted by anything. He shouldn't with her, either, but just the smell of her is intoxicating. More simply, she's asking him to drink, and he can't say no. 

She doesn't answer, but just stares into his eyes, her lips curving in that faint smile. "Yes," he breathes, and her smile becomes deeper. 

"Whenever I touch another male I think about you," she says, another sentence that shouldn't make him hard but it's so, so out of his control now. She takes a slow drink, tilting her head back so that his eyes trace her throat in the firelight. The smell of her is overpowering. 

"What do you think about, sweetheart?" he murmurs, still holding his hand in his. He reaches forward with his other hand to brush a piece of hair out of her face, his fingers lightly running across her cheekbones. He watches her take a sharp inhale, closing her eyes briefly against his touch. She turns her cheek against his hand.

"You have to drink for that one," she murmurs, and he takes the bottle, dropping her hand, almost surprised to find himself finishing it. 

"Now," he breathes, voice low, and inches closer to her. He sets the bottle on the mantle and reaches one hand towards her face, brushing his thumb across her lips. 

"Memories, sometimes," she says, and gets a wicked grin on her face. 

This time, when Nesta grabs his face in both hands and pulls hers close to his, he leaves a hand free to intercept her knee before it hits him between the legs. He grips her knee, then slides a hand under it to support her, his other hand wrapped around her waist. “You can’t pull that one twice, sweetheart,” he breathes, his lips centimeters from hers, and then closes the distance. Her hands grip the side of his face. His lips brush hers, lightly, brushing over the soft skin in the faintest trace, and he feels a shiver go through her from her knee in his left hand to her waist, cradled in his right hand. He pulls his face back. 

Nesta, her hands still on his face, opens her eyes, and stares into his. “_No,”_ she hisses, and his eyes widen a fraction in surprise before she grips his face and pulls it to hers again. 

This time the kiss is not light, not a jolt of electricity, but of molten fire. Her mouth is rough against his, devouring, pulling at his lips and forcing against him, and he drops her left leg to put his left hand in her hair as she presses her body against him. “No,” she hisses again, against his mouth, and moves her hands from his face to fist in his hair, pulling him towards her. He can feel the heat from her body against him, feel every place where their bodies touch, the erection pressed against her thigh. His wings cast her face into shadow. 

“No?” he asks gently, against her mouth, between kisses. “What do you need, Nesta?” 

“Stop,” she whispers, but her hands curl into fists in his hair, and she pulls him closer to her.

Cassian is perfectly still. He can feel his blood thrumming in his veins. Nesta kisses him once more on the lips, rough and hot, then kisses the side of his jaw, then moves her hands to angle his neck towards her. Her warm breath caresses the side of his neck, sending blood pooling into his core, making his cock rise harder against her. She kisses over the pulse of his carotid, then uses her teeth to graze the skin, her hands still tight in his hair.

_Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, why is she saying no, why is she staying stop,_ his brain asks, while his whole body burns against her. It takes all his concentration to ask, in a measured tone that still comes out huskier than he was anticipating: “What do you want, Nesta?” 

“Stop,” she whispers again, and takes the skin between his neck and shoulder into her mouth, sucking on it lightly. He cannot escape the sharp intake of breath that escapes him.

She pauses, and he feels her lips curl into a vicious smile against his neck. “Stop _talking_,” she whispers, against his throat, and something snaps inside of him as she bites the side of his neck once more. A growl escapes him and he arches against her, his cock unmistakably hard against her leg. He feels her shiver as she pulls closer to him, moving her legs so that she grinds against his thigh, and fuck he wants her, more than he’d wanted anything for—as long as he could remember right now. 

She wants something, too. “_No,_” he says suddenly, and grabs her arms, holding them above her head, and then he is pinning her against the wall, both her ands held over her head, wrists pinned by one hand, and his knee is between her legs, and she is staring at him with eyes that burn, and that flame that sears him. Her lips part and her breath comes in short, shallow bursts.

“I've wanted this too long to rush it,” he whispers to her, his mouth by her ear, and flicks a tongue out to lick her earlobe. Her breath comes in a deeper gasp and he feels her writhe against his knee, pushing her cunt against his leg. He tilts his head to let his breath graze over her neck, listening to her pulse quicken, and lets his lips just ghost over the place he had once kissed. “Is this playing nice, sweetheart?” he asks, and as he kisses right over her pulse she moans, writhing harder against him. He feels throbbing in his own cock at that moan. 

He knows she had been fucking all those other males. He knows, too, the reputation she has in Velaris—and everywhere, for that matter—of being the most frightening thing the city had seen, of insatiable appetite, voracious hunger, never fulfilled. He could have told her that if she wanted someone to fuck her right she should’ve started with him. Something in her, he knows, wants the force, needs to be held and to scream. 

“And what do you want?” he murmurs, against her throat. He still holds her hands above her head with his left hand, and with his right hand he reaches down and grabs her breast through the draping white fabric. It feels better than he imagined it would, full and soft in his hand, and she gasps again, arching her head back, and that is too much and too delicious and he kisses her neck again, with more force this time, grazing his teeth over the faster thrumming of her pulse as his right hand finds her nipple. “Because I think you want something else,” he says, voice a deep rumble against her neck. He pinches her nipple between his thumb and forefinger between the fabric the same time he tightens his grip on her wrists, forcing her to straighten out and so pushing her breasts forward, towards him. "I've wanted to see these," he says, quietly, into the hollow of her neck. He squeezes gently and she whimpers again.

"Take it off," Nesta whispers, and he pauses, perfectly still against her. He can't help the grin that she feels against the skin of her neck.

"Pardon?" he asks again, teasing, but she can feel his cock hard against her leg and she's tired of games.

"Take it off," Nesta says, pulling her hands against him, and he releases her hands, stepping back. She reaches down at the hem of her dress, fumbling with the fabric, and pulling it over her head feels his hands with her, helping her. She drops the dress into a white puddle of fabric on the floor and leans back against the wall. He moves against her again, the heat of his body and the heat of the fire and she is caught in the middle, aware of how wet she's getting, needing his touch. She looks into his eyes and raises her arms again. This time Cassian's lips curve in a dark smile, and he obliges her by putting his hand back against her wrists, pinning her arms to the wall behind her. She stiffens her body and exhales, tremulous, against him. 

With his left hand holding her arms, he reaches his right to her chest, pushing aside thin silk undergarments, and then here is the soft skin of her breasts, smooth and perfect, and her nipple hard between his fingers. He squeezes it once, his warm breath caressing the side of her neck, and she can't stop the moan that escapes her. He stops moving, the only point of contact her wrists under his left hand, her nipple under his right thumb, and her body, pressed against his knee. 

He lifts his face away from her neck, his lips ghosting over the angle of her jaw, over her lips, but he pulls back when she tries to kiss him again. 

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, softly, staring into her eyes. 

Nesta's face contorts in anger and her lips part. “How dare you,” she breathes. 

Cassian raises an eyebrow. “Is that a yes or a no?” he asks. 

“How dare you,” she says again, her voice louder, and now she is straining against his hands, trying to push her face to his. “I will not beg you for this,” she says, and he feels the strain of her muscles against his arms. 

He grins, and allows her inch of freedom to push her mouth, hot and needy, against his. “Wanna bet, sweetheart?” he asks, against her mouth, and she growls, opening her mouth against him, forcing her tongue between his lips. 

“Pinch it,” she breathes, not moving her mouth, and then he obliges, his right hand squeezing her nipple, and she writhes against him, moaning into his mouth. He feels like doors are shutting inside of him, one by one. 

“Will you come like this, sweetheart?” he asks, feeling her grinding against his knee, feeling her nipple get hard between his fingers. “Is that what you want? I don’t know if you're ready to get fucked,” he continues, against her mouth, and at that phrase _get fucked_ she groans against his mouth and pushes harder against his knee. 

“No,” she whispers, contrary, and he smiles against her mouth. He knows this thing inside of her, some thing that fights and fights to find something to struggle against, find something that would not yield that she can throw herself against again and again. 

“You sure?” he breathes, against her lips, and pinches her nipple again, and she groans as she breaks off the kiss. He lets go of her wrists, his left hand trailing down her arm, down the side of her face, down her neck, to find her other breast through her shirt. 

She keeps her arms up. At that sight he feels blood rush into his cock and he knows, then, that he has her. He reaches down, uses both hands to remove the scrap of silk covering her breasts, throwing it behind him without looking. He exhales slowly as he looks at her breasts, feeling his blood thrum. She keeps her arms up but moves her hands to bend her elbows, palms against the wall, pushing her breasts towards him, and he feels dizzy from pleasure. 

“Good, good,” he breathes, against her neck, and watches the interesting way her nipples stand erect as he speaks. “I love these,” he whispers into the side of her neck, as his fingertips trace across her breasts. She whimpers, wordlessly, against him, and he can feel wetness on his leg where she is rubbing against his thigh, her hips moving in a way that makes his voice hard to control. He leans his head down and gently brushes her left nipple with his lips, feeling her body jump, then starts pulling, sucking, catching it between his teeth. She moans, pushing her chest towards his mouth, and he bites down. 

“Fuck,” she says, her voice thick, her hands still against the wall, “fuck, fuck, fuck—“ 

“Oh, no even close to that, sweetheart,” he murmurs against her breast, but then he moves one hand down her body, slowly tracing over her navel and down the front of her stomach, tracing to the dip of her silk underwear, and she bucks against his touch. With sudden force he bites her nipple at the same time he pushes against her cunt and she gasps, hard, her body shuddering on the wall. He grins, his mouth against her breast. “Close,” he murmurs, then reaches his left hand to her other breast. His right hand hovers over her silk underwear, and he starts to draw lazy circles with his thumb, lightly touching her clit. “Closer?” he asks, his hand gentle but insistent, and she pushes her hips towards him, whimpering against him. He hooks the top of her underwear with one finger, pulling it down, as his left thumb and forefinger find her nipple hard again. 

“Oh yes, closer,” he whispers, and moves his face up from her breast to the side of her neck again. His fingers are tracing her lips, finding her wet, and he gently bites the side of her neck, eliciting another moan from her. Then Cassian begins to work, stroking her clit in small strokes with his thumb, pinching her left nipple. She gasps against him and he grins against her neck. The wetness on his hand grows, and suddenly he plunges a finger inside of her just as he pinches down, hard, on her left nipple. Nesta stiffens against him then, gasping, and he feels her clench on his finger, again and again, in a way that makes his stiff cock ache and his mouth water. He bites her throat as she comes, working her gently with his thumb and forefinger until her orgasm is spent and she relaxes against the wall, against him. He lifts his head from her throat, slipping a finger out of her, and moves his head back enough to look her in the eyes. 

“Pleasure doing business with you, sweetheart,” he says, then slowly licks the tip of his forefinger. 

Nesta stares at him, eyes glittering with lust and rage. He shouldn’t find it as much of a turn on as he does. He pulls his knee away from where it pins her against the wall, stepping back, when she moves suddenly, her hands coming away from the wall. 

“No,” she hisses, vehemently, and he blinks in surprise. “I don’t spend months fantasizing about your cock so you can deny it to me now, you hulking bastard—“ and before he can register his surprise she has a hand between his legs, gripping him, and fuck he is still so very hard, the taste of her on his fingers done its final work. Her hands work fast and he barely registers when he’s turned around, his back hitting the wall, wings spread, and Nesta’s body is too close to him. Her shirt is still off and he can’t stop staring at her glorious breasts, though he’s quickly distracted by her hands working the waistband off his pants until his cock springs free. Her quick, sharp intake of breath makes his eyes go to her face, where he finds her eyes focused on cock. A slow smile comes over her lips. 

“Nesta,” he says, because suddenly things are happening too fast, and he just wanted to tease her, show her what she’s been missing, but she’s staring at him with her eyes glittering and dark. She reaches to his hands and puts one on her breast and the skin is so soft and he can’t help his moan, the way his thumb grazes over her nipple. She doesn’t miss the way it makes his cock twitch. She presses her body to his, her shirt off, her underwear still pulled roughly down her thighs, and he’s wearing far too much clothing, shirt still on, pants pulled roughly down. 

“The things I’ve put up with,” Nesta is hissing in his ear, her breath hot against him, and he can feel her whole body pressed against him. 

“Did you want this, sweetheart?” he asks, turning his head toward her. “All you had to do was ask—“ 

“I told you to stop talking,” Nesta says, her voice deadly calm. She runs a hand down the plane of his stomach, gently. Using only the tip of her forefinger, she gently trails it down the length of his cock. His vision narrows. His head is still dizzy from the alcohol. It's almost too much. But this is a fight too and he isn’t giving up. 

“I was never good at following instructions,” he murmurs. 

“Why am I not surprised,” she says, but then suddenly all the warmth of her is gone from him and she is on her knees in front of him. 

“Nesta—what—you,” he starts to say, but then she puts his cock in her mouth and the whole world stops. She is going slowly, so slowly, pressing him against her mouth, her soft lips, her tongue coming out to just touch the tip of his shaft. He moans and feels her lips on the side of his cock curve into a smile. He twitches in anticipation and then her mouth opens, and she takes the head of his cock into her mouth, soft and wet and warm, and it is everything he can do to hold back his climax. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she purses her lips, drawing him deeper into her mouth, sliding her tongue under his cock, moving her lips so her teeth barely graze his skin, and he feels himself stiffen more, feels something start to stir. 

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. He really hadn’t intended it to go this far. He wanted to fuck her the right way, wanted the first time he came to be right, not this fast and angry, this hungry. But this is Nesta all over, isn't it? 

“What do you want, Nesta?” he asks, body trembling, looking down at her hair mussed between his thighs. She has her eyes closed, and at his voice starts to suck a little in a way that made his core clench. “If you keep doing that,” he starts to warn, but her eyes shoot open and met his, gray to hazel, and then she shoves him deep into her throat, staring into his eyes, and them he can't talk anymore, can't see because he is coming, coming so hard he thinks he is going to explode, wrapping his fingers in her hair. His mind explodes in a wall of flame before it goes dark, leaving ragged holes on the edge of his vision. When it comes back Nesta is still holding his cock in her mouth, and before she releases him, sucks off every drop. 

"Did that live up to your expectations?" he asks, teasingly, and Nesta, hair mussed, topless and straightening her underwear in front of him, cocks her head as if she is considering. She smiles at him, and licks her lips slowly. At that something snaps inside of him and he grabs her, pulling her against him in another kiss, tasting himself on her lips. Nesta's arms are around him, her hands fisted in his hair, and he wraps his arms around her and lifts her up and she wraps her legs around his waist. 

_Mine, mine, mine_, something in his blood sings, something dark and ancient and so hard to control, so hard to block out, and Cassian is carrying Nesta towards her bedroom, wings flaring out, pushing the door open blindly, kissing her hot and wet and heavy, tasting wine and semen and smelling her scent, and when he feels his knees hit the four poster bed he drops her on it. He pulls his shirt over his head and she eyes his chest, her eyes lingering on his tattoos, his biceps, her eyes following his abdomen down to the deep V of muscles pointing to his cock. She lays back, stretching her arms overhead, her glorious breasts peaking towards him, and he leans over her and bites one hard, sucking on her nipple, and her hands clench in his hair again, pushing his head lower, and he kneels at the edge of the bed and feasts. 

She doesn't keep count. She can't. The alcohol and the pleasure drown her and Nesta wraps her fists in his hair, her eyes rolling back, as his tongue licks her up and down, light and soft on her clit until she is trembling, aching for it, and then with one broad stroke of his tongue she's coming again, arching her back, screaming _CASSIAN, CASSIAN_ and writhing against him, and he doesn't let her go, just slows down as she comes down, staring into his eyes, and once she can breathe he speeds up again, savoring the taste of her, feeling his own erection build. She comes against his mouth again and again, on his mouth and his fingers and when she comes so hard she is almost sobbing she uses her fists in his hair to pull him up towards her, and kisses him hard and insistent, tasting her own orgasm on his tongue. She drops her hands to pull at his pants, and he breaks from her long enough to help her make sure they are both naked. 

_Mine, mine, mine, mine,_ the dark voice in his head is saying, and smelling her it's so hard to ignore it. Nesta might not know about the mating bond, doesn't know what it means, can't, he tells himself, trying to hold back, but her eyes lock with Cassian's and she growls at him, "don't deny me what's _mine_," and pulls him forward and he sinks into her, losing all control. 

"Nesta, Nesta, Nesta," he's moaning, one hand bracing against the bed, and she gasps against him, pulling him deep into her, and when she has him buried to the hilt inside of her she comes again, clenching on his cock with her cunt and he can't think of anything but her. 

When she's done she sighs contentedly against his mouth, and he pauses, still deep inside her, and then she grins that wicked, cruel smile against his mouth and pushes him away. Cassian leans back, kneeling over her, and she crawls up to her knees and pushes her body against him, kissing him, pushing against him until he overbalances, falls back so that his head hangs off the edge of the bed.

"Oh, yes, I like you like this," Nesta says, kneeling over him, and lowers herself onto him and begins to ride him. He pushes back against her, pushing them up until he's not half-hanging off the bed, and she's riding him hard and fast, her breasts bouncing, and he's as hard as he's ever been, straining not to come. "Sit up," she commands, pulling at his shoulders, and he does, bracing against a poster of her bed, wings around either side and she grips the tops of his wings and rides him fast, shoving her breast into his face, and he bites her nipple, gripping her ass with both hands, and she gasps and comes, hard, clenching against him. 

"You have very limited time left on this ride, sweetheart," he murmurs against her mouth, when she stops, and she grins again and pulls his hair, tugging them both backwards until they fall in a heap, managing to land with him still inside of her. 

"Then fuck me hard," she says, in a low growl, into his ear, and he obliges her. 

They come together, with her screaming his name, and if he was trying to deny it before the mating bond is so strong that it physically hurts. "Mine," he gasps, emptying into her, and she bites his lips in answer, holding him against her until both their breathing evens out. 

\--- 

When Nesta wakes up, Cassian is there, next to her, still naked in bed, one of his hands resting on her leg, his hair on her pillow. He's touching her. She can feel him in the back of her mind, in a thread she knows but doesn't want to name. He's touching her and he's in her bed and he's naked and she's naked and her mind is a white blank of panic and nightmares in black water and she needs to _get out._

She can feel them still, tugging on her from across the city, pulling on her like a physical sensation. The well of magic inside her seems unimaginably deep. She flees to it. 

\--- 

Cassian wakes to an empty bed, his own clothes strewn about the bedroom but Nesta nowhere to be seen. He can feel her in the back of his mind, a knot of emotions too dark and dense to untangle, and his heart seizes up. 

"Nesta?" he calls, standing up, and wanders naked to the bedroom door. When he pulls it open he sees Lucien, sitting in the kitchen with a steaming mug. 

When Lucien sees him, his eyes widen. "Oh," he says. "That's not what I expected."

"What are you doing here?" Cassian demands, ignoring his nakedness. 

Lucien sips from his mug. "Just checking in on my in-law after I lost her while drunk," he says, calmly. "But if you're here, I think she may be....more upset than I bargained for." 

"She's my mate," Cassian says, and his voice breaks on the word _mate_, and Lucien's eyes soften. 

"Go get dressed," Lucien says. "We need to talk." 

\---

The day is overcast and the sunrise is just a lightening at the edge of the sky, casting gray light on the streets. When she gets to the bookstore they are clustered outside, a crowd the living on these streets haven't noticed they've been avoiding. Nesta is wearing a black silk dress that conceals her neck, her chest, and if she is paler than yesterday, the dead don't notice. 

Nesta opens the door and looks at the crowd. The child she saw the first day, Keres, steps forward, her white shift stained, her black skin reflecting no light in the early, overcast dawn. Nesta crouches, to be at Keres's height, and the child walks towards her. "Are you ready to go?" Nesta asks, taking her hand, and leads her gently up the stairs. 

Keres sits at the desk, writing her story, while Nesta watches out the window. The crowd of spirits gathers around the black-leaf tree, but they stare at the blue door, not looking up to the window. Nesta leans against the window, and the visions come to her again. Keres is still a child, still young, and Nesta sees a different Velaris, sees trading vessels with different sails that come to trade, where she skips on the weathered docks, her own feet barefoot and dark against the gray boards. She catches fish with her bare hands, in a flash of silver scales, tastes steaming spices, roasted meat, feels the warmth of her mother's hand on her back as she goes to sleep. Through Keres's eyes the legions in the sky are terrifying, casting shadows over the streets, and when she meets the eyes of one of them, terror bitter and overwhelming in her mouth, she watches the thing smile before the arrow hits her in the heart. 

Nesta wakes on the tufted couch gasping, holding her chest, and Keres is sitting quietly, next to her finished stack of papers, watching her. Nesta goes to her and puts both arms around the girl, hugs her. "I'm sorry," she whispers, and Keres nods mutely against her chest. She releases the spirit. "Are you ready to go?" she asks, and the girl nods mutely again. 

Nesta walks to the top of the stairs, reaching inside of herself. The magic today feels deeper than it did before, an endless lightning pool that she forces into small threads between her fingers, winding threads around the door, until it is ready. 

"Thank you," Keres says, in a child's voice, and squeezes Nesta's hand before she drops it and walks through. 

Nesta drops the threads, opens the door again. This time a tall spirit with tree bark gray skin, with dark green hair, steps forward, dressed in every shade of the forest. 

"Are you ready?" Nesta asks the spirit, her voice measured, looking into its eyes, and the spirit nods and follows her inside. 

\---

Time is passing differently for Nesta now. She is living in compressed time, extended time, her memories overwhelmed and flooded. Visions of the deep woods, of a world made of the textures of shadows, worlds made of the inside of caves, worlds made up of the battlefield with Hybern, worlds made of mud and blood and magic. She breathes in water with shipwrecked Fae, feels the ground rush to her with terminal velocity and the crunch of her own bones breaking, tastes the lightness of a pool, high in the mountains, made of light of the rising sun. She feels the embrace of a mate and the nausea of a knife in her gut, the taste of heart ripped fresh from a chest, the coppery smell of blood in the streets, the terror of children whose last thought was of _mother_. She does not think of her own mother, the proud, important woman for whom Nesta will always be ten years old, the memory of her mother's haughty eyes and her soft hand in her hair, or of her father, the sadness in his eyes as he looked at her, the crack of his neck on that battlefield. She has to see that battlefield so many times, through the eyes of so many spirits, watching now Bryaxis as nightmare, watching the Weaver as soldiers wither before her, giving up life to her, watching the Bone Carver with his scythe that looses souls from bodies, light as a feather, feel her own soul separate at the touch of that blade. She watches magic flare over that battlefield, watches the Cauldron pour liquid death that rushes down her throat the same way the black water of the Cauldron did, watches Cassian fly into battle, his wings against the dark sky, feels the awe and terror of his soldiers as he slaughters faster than she can blink. She is a soldier slaughtered by him, meeting his eyes as his sword slashes her throat. She fights beside him, and he kills soldiers that have a knife to her throat. She watches him fly away, towards the king. 

Nesta cannot withstand it. Some amount of time is passing but whatever is happening outside the dark blue door and whatever is happening inside the dark blue door and whatever is happening inside her head are all different, all at different speeds, and she can't track them, anymore. 

She becomes tired, feeling exhaustion pulse through her when she seizes the magic, feels it in her throat. Nesta thinks of sleep but when she thinks of going home she feels a dark knot of emotion in the back of her mind, and the panic grips her again, tight in her chest, and she needs a few more lifetimes to wash it away. 

The crowd doesn't lessen. The shelves begin to fill, fill with the stories of the dead, with the last words. That's the name of the bookstore, she thinks blankly, as the light falls from the door, as the next spirit enters. _Last Words. _

There must be another way, Nesta thinks, exhaustion burning at the edge of her mind, as the next spirit, a water-wraith, sits at the table, her long spindly fingers gripping the pen. She reaches into the edges of her magic and thinks of a door, of a doorway wide enough for every spirit to go through. When she holds the magic she remembers pages of Acheron that speak of the death magic, that speak of the shore on the other side. The warnings fuzz and blur in her memory with fatigue. 

Through the eyes of the water-wraith she sees Feyre, sees Amren, sees a book clutched in their arms, pulls open an iron door and saves her sister. Some small voice inside her starts wailing. 

When the water wraith goes through the door, Nesta follows her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -haha I lived up to that E rating didn't I, not sorry  
-limited third person POV? i don’t know her  
-this chapter gets all its hp from [lilithsaur’s nessian fanart](%E2%80%9C) because it LITERALLY GIVES ME LIFE  
-someone pay me to come up with high-concept high-budget bars  
-I would like you to know that I spent just as long looking at pictures of dresses Nesta might wear as writing this fanfic  
-what has Cassian been doing? IDK man maybe we'll find out someday when we get a chapter where Nesta's not drunk constantly or panicking and running away from him. like in a different fanfic


	4. The Last Gray Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which things resolve

When Amren wakes up she feels the vortex, towering at her from across the city. "Damn," she mutters, and Varian stirs in bed next to her. 

"What is it?" the prince asks, opening one eye to look at her.

"Bad magic," Amren says briefly, staring through the walls towards the bookstore. She bites her lip. "I think Nesta's involved." 

"What can I do?" Varian asks, sitting up beside her, rubbing her arm. Amren looks over at him, and her gaze softens. 

"Go to Nesta's apartment. Find Lucien and bring him and meet me," she says, then crawls out of bed, reaching for clothes. 

"Where?" Varian asks, and Amren closes her eyes, feeling the vortex roaring on the edge of her senses. 

"There's a store downtown that sells Autumn Court fashion," she says. "Behind Hesperides Bakery. Find me there."

"There's bad magic in a clothing store?" Varian asks, but Amren is already running out the door. 

\---

By the time Cassian gets dressed Lucien has two mugs of tea sitting on the counter. Cassian is as agitated as Lucien has ever seen him--not the calm of a general but the anxiety of a panther, stalking back and forth restlessly. Lucien recognizes the raw nerves of the newly-mated. 

"Where is she," Cassian snarls, more command than question, as he paces the kitchen. 

Lucien takes a sip of his tea. "I suspect with Amren or at the bookstore," he says, calmly. 

"Bookstore? What bookstore?" 

Lucien sets the mug down. "She bought a bookstore," he says, then rubs his eyes. "Yesterday she said something, something about going to the bookstore and finding a spirit there." 

"What do you mean, found a spirit," Cassian says, again, his voice hard and flat. Lucien can read the undercurrents there, the edge of jealousy of _my mate is talking to another male _and worse, more panicked, the _where is my mate where is my mate_ that Lucien envies, so deep in his bones. 

"We need to find Amren," Lucien says. "She can explain better than I can."

"Explain what?" Cassian asks, his eyes dark and glittering. His tea sits, steaming and untouched. _Well, I tried,_ Lucien thinks, and sighs. 

There's a knock on the door. Both males stare at each other, and Cassian bolts to the door. "Nesta--" he says, opening it, but Varian is standing at the door. 

His eyes settle on Cassian's face, then his expression shifts slightly. "What a surprise," he says. 

"Where is she," Cassian asks, his voice almost a snarl.

"Newly mated?" Varian asks, cooly, and shifts his gaze to Lucien. Lucien nods and sighs. "Congratulations seems like the wrong word," Varian says to Cassian, "but that's just because I've met her."

"He might kill you," Lucien says, mildly, taking another sip of tea, as Cassian--faster than he can blink--slams Varian against the door, eyes flashing. "We all know Nesta is terrifying. I wouldn't joke about it for, oh, another few years. Cassian, let's hear him out, please." 

Cassian, breathing heavy, releases Varian, who straightens his shirt. "Watch yourself," Cassian says, his eyes still dark. 

"Amren sent me," Varian says, unnecessarily. "There's something happening and she thinks Nesta's involved."

"What?" Cassian asks, his voice soft and dangerous. 

Varian shrugs. "She used the phrase 'bad magic,'" he says, putting up air quotes. 

"Well, this sounds like a classic Nesta reaction," Lucien says, mildly. 

Cassian takes a deep breath in. "This did not go as planned," he says, shutting his eyes momentarily. 

"I mean, Nesta was involved," Varian says. "What did you expect? She loves to upset plans."

"And then burn them and stomp on their ashes," Lucien adds, dryly. He raises a hand in surrender as Cassian gives him a dangerous look. "She's my friend," he says. "I mean, I think. What was the plan?" 

"Not this," Cassian mutters. "We need to go. Where is she?" 

"She mentioned a store behind Hesperides Bakery?" Varian says, frowning. 

"Let's go," Cassian says, tucking his wings, and is out the door by the time Lucien sets down his mug. 

\---

When they find Amren she is standing in the middle of a street, holding her hands in front of her chest, fingertips touching, staring intently at a dark brick building with a single tree in front. Varian goes to stand behind her, setting a hand on her shoulder. 

"What am I looking at, again?" Cassian asks. 

"Amren," Lucien calls, and she turns to stare at them. 

"Good, you're here," she says, eyes focusing on Cassian, then something grabs her attention and she swears under her breath, turning her attention back to the building. "Damn," she mutters, and brings up her right hand, holding it towards the building. Something is wrong. 

"Amren, what's happening," Cassian asks, alarm creeping into his voice. 

She gives an annoyed sigh and reaches toward him, dropping her right hand and reaching forward to grab his chin. "_See,_" she hisses, and puts her left hand over his eyes. Cassian blinks suddenly as pain shoots through both eyes, but it's over before he can cry out. 

He stands back, blinking, and gasps. "Shit," he mutters, lifting a hand as if to shield his eyes. Next to him, Amren has put her hand over Lucien's nonmagic eye, and the male gives a strangled sound as her magic covers it. 

"And all that--is from Nesta?" Cassian asks, his voice trembling. 

"Well this looks bad," Lucien says, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

Moments ago, this was an unassuming shop--two stories, with a storefront below and tall, narrow windows in the upper story of the gray brick storefront. A slender tree, almost as tall as the building, on the sidewalk in front of it, with pale bark and leaves so dark they appear black. But now something else is happening. Lines of magic surround the building, like an intricate swirl of lace, impossibly thin strands that burn his eyes, silk made of lightning. They converge on the door next to the storefront, which moments ago was dark blue. With the magic visible, the entire door is solid white. The lines around it are pulsing, changing, constantly shifting, whirls and lines coming together and breaking apart, shifting up and down the gray bricks and the glass of the windows. The panes of the windows of the top story are pure white, too bright to look at. As they watch, the lines are peeling off the walls, sliding down the sidewalk, trying to escape the bound of the building. 

"What is she doing," Cassian says, his voice flat. He turns to look at Lucien. "You know what's been going on? You let this happen?" 

Lucien raises an eyebrow and the gold eye whirs toward Cassian. "No one lets Nesta do anything," he says dryly. "I didn't even know where this place was. It was only a few days ago that we knew her powers were...manifesting." He shrugs. "Death magic." 

"We suspected that," Cassian says, glancing back toward the building. "But I didn't think she'd been using them."

"That's the problem," Lucien says. "She wasn't. But they built up too much, to a level she couldn't control, and she lashed out and hurt someone. I think...We think she's been building them up, not using any, for too long." 

"And now this?" Cassian asks. "What is she doing with them?" 

Lucien looks to the side, and Cassian gets a distinct impression he wishes he were anywhere else. "She's been...seeing things," he says. 

Cassian's eyes narrow. 

"She's a death creature," Amren says. She's holding up her right hand again, twisting at the wrist. Where she twists, the tendrils that are trying to break off the building snap and recoil onto the gray brick. "It's where she went in the Cauldron, I suspect, but she came back. The dead are seeking her out, trying to get to the other side, because she can form the conduit now. But there has not been a conduit in years, and there are too many." 

"What is she doing, then?" Lucien asks, staring at the building. 

"She's...trying to form one large gateway," Varian says, slowly. He's staring at the store, face silhouetted against the lightning magic. 

"Yes. And it doesn't work that way," Amren growls. "Foolish child. Death is not a group travel experience. She is overwhelmed by how many there are but she cannot do it like this. She's going to burn herself out." 

"Why did no one tell me about this?" Cassian demands, an edge forming on his voice. "Amren!" 

"Are you mates?" Amren says, irritated.

Cassian looks murderous. "Well, funny story," Lucien says, dryly.

Amren sighs impatiently and her gaze bores into Cassian's face. "Has she accepted you? Do you have claim over her life?" 

Cassian turns away, his gaze dark, and it lands on Lucien, who steps back. 

"What am I, the universal punching bag?" Lucien mutters. "Why do I always get blamed when these Archeron sisters get themselves into nonsense--" 

"How long did you know?" Cassian asks, softly, dangerously. "Why did you not tell us?" 

"I know you're upset that she's in danger, but now may not be the time for me to explain Nesta's recalcitrance," Lucien says. He catches Cassian's eye, and his face softens. 

"How do we get her back?" Cassian asks, turning back to stare at the shifting lace of magic on the building. "Where is she?"

"She may have crossed over," Amren mutters, to herself, moving her fingers, causing lines of magic to snap back onto the brick.

"Crossed over to where?" Cassian asks.

"Death," Amren says, bluntly. "I suspect she's been there before, but I don't know. She doesn't talk about the Cauldron. But they're connected."

"Can she come back?" he asks.

"I don't know," Amren says. "I certainly can't reach her. It can only be you," and as she speaks she turns, dropping her hands, so her eyes lock with Cassian's. "If you're mates. If you're bonded. No one else can reach her." 

Cassian swears, loudly. Amren turns her attention back to the building. 

"She could kill you, you know," Lucien says. 

"Since when have I cared about that," Cassian mutters. His face is pale, staring at the nexus of the bookshop, the web that wraps the entire building. Since Amren's touch on his eyes that revealed the web, he can't stop looking away. The magic is so bright it hurts to look at. His chest hurts, physically. That black knot of emotions in his mind is burning. 

Lucien nods towards the bookstore. "I saw what happened when she hit someone with that magic. Amren thinks it's like the Weaver--concentrated death magic." 

"Amren, have you been neglecting to tell us about Nesta terrorizing innocent citizens of Velaris with uncontrolled magic?" Cassian asks, still staring at the building. 

"I can't get in," Amren says, ignoring him. She's holding her hand towards the blue door, fingers crooked in an odd way. "I'm not even sure I can make a way in for you, boy. But I can try." 

"Just get me to her," Cassian says. 

"Good luck," Lucien says, quietly. "Cauldron help you."

"That damn pot has done enough," Amren snaps. She's focused on the blue door, hand trembling with the effort of whatever she's doing. Varian has a hand on her low back, his eyes unfocused and sweat beading on his forehead, and Cassian suspects he's feeding her magic. 

"Go tell Rhys," Cassian commands Lucien, in the voice of the general. "He will have to contain this if I fail." Lucien nods.

"Amren, how do I get in?" Cassian asks, turning back to the diminutive woman. She turns her head from the web of light to look at him. 

"When you see the break, go for the door," Amren says. "I don't know what will happen once you cross the threshold. It used to be a bookstore up there. I think she's turned the whole building into a conduit. But I don't know what you'll find on the other side, and I don't know what will happen once it stops. I don't know if you'll be able to come back. But if she keeps going like this, the conduit will overwhelm the city." 

"Just get me in," Cassian mutters, and Amren nods. 

"On my count," she says, and turns her attention back to the building. She brings her left hand up with her right, brings the tips of her fingers together, arms outstretched in front of her. 

"One," she says, and Cassian begins to move, tucking his wings in behind him, as the light shifts and moves on the building. The air is crackling, and his hair is standing up as he moves closer to it. 

"Two," Amren cries, pulling her fingers apart, and he sees a narrow rectangle of dark start to appear over the door. He reaches a hand forward, feeling lighting crackling near his wings. 

"Three!" Amren yells, pulling both hands apart, and for just a second the door is free. He grabs the knob and pulls, the magic now so bright he can't see anything except the black square, and falls into the darkness. 

\--- 

When Cassian's vision clears, he is on hands and knees in grainy, gray sand, in his fighting leathers and his knives. The last gray shore, he thinks. The place you go when you die. 

Magic is crackling in the air, off the gray sand and the black water. In the distance, he sees dark mountains, with thick clouds coalescing around their tops, clouds that move and change too fast. Spirits line the beach, dark silhouettes he can't make out, appearing through the electric-white lines of the magic. Beyond them she is there, her face dark, silver lightning in her eyes, power sparking from her. _Nesta._

\---

The stories surround Nesta like a hurricane, swirling in all directions. She thought that crossing over would let them all come at once. She sees the line, stretching to the horizon. She stands at the edge of the black water, waves lapping at the edge of her black dress, feet in the sand. The magic is crackling through her, a well inside her so deep that she can't feel how to surface from it, spilling out through her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her fingertips, leaving afterimages from her limbs when she moves. Still they come.

Visions of black sails on blue water, of buildings that sway high in the trees, of towers built impossibly high, of silks in colors she doesn't have names for, of dark rocks cutting her feet, of liquid fire hitting crashing waves, of glass towers too bright to look at, of rushing freezing water in underwater caves, of flying, of being born in a pool of blood and cold air. She dies in every way. She dies with an arrow in her heart, with a knife slicing open her belly, with water filling up her lungs, with tumors eating away at her organs, with her head smashed open against the rock, with her body exploded in a mist of dark blood, dies quietly in silk sheets, dies in warm wet darkness and a heartbeat that thumps until it slows and stops, dies on a table under bright lights, dies painlessly with an exhale, dies with pain that fills her entire body until it burns her up, dies fast, slow, in water, air, earth, fire-- 

She can't see. _This was a mistake,_ she thinks, with the small part of her that can still think,_ it's too much, it's too many, I can't take the stories like this, they should have been one at a time and now _

The clouds overhead are moving very fast, but Nesta can't see them. She can't see her hair, crackling with magic, blowing as if in the wind, can't see her eyes as just two pools of silver light in her face. It feels like she is swallowing the dead, swallowing their lives, sending words back. A story must be told, must be recorded. Now her magic is printing words on pages, bridging through that gateway inside of her, and somewhere the pages are filling up, all at once. _No_, she thinks, her thoughts panicky. 

One spirit hovers very near her, standing so close to Nesta she is like a second skin, her hands hovering just inside Nesta's hands, her face just behind Nesta's face. _I did this_, the spirit says, her voice sad and sorrowful in Nesta's head, cutting through the swirl of images and death. _I imprisoned the Weaver, the Bone-Carver, the Deathless, and this was the price_. 

Nesta is using a great deal of magic, now, more than she has ever used in her life. It feels like she's holding a set of strings that are keeping the world from collapsing, so many that she is caught by them. 

"What was the price?" she asks, and the spirit, the queen, sends a brief feeling of warmth up Nesta's spine. 

_Destroying the bridge,_ she said._ The bridge that the dead must use to cross. It was the only way to imprison the death-gods._

"Then you don't get to cross either," Nesta says, her voice lost in the storm of magic. 

_No._

The queen leaves Nesta's side, disappearing down the beach. Nesta is unaware of tears dripping from her eyes, hot and angry, as she feeds magic into the beach, into the doorway, into the pages, into the souls, into the water. "Am I trapped? Did you trap them all?" Nesta demands, to no answer. She feels suspended in magic. She remembers the Cauldron, somewhere down in her own memories, that have the faintest tinge of her own life. The rest of her is bleeding, is drowning, is burning, is asphyxiating, is caught up in the storm. 

She can't feel the tears dripping down her face. The queen is gone. Nesta is alone. She is, she was, she has, she will, die from weeping, from screaming, from hurting, from being stabbed dismembered impaled decapitated devoured 

Hands touch her, strong, warm hands on the side of her face, lifting her face up, and when she feels them brush her tears, something twists in her gut. 

"Nesta," Cassian's voice is saying, very low in her ear. "Nesta. I'm here." 

Her hands, trailing magic, reach up to touch his arms. "You shouldn't be here," she whimpers. "You can't be here." She remembers magic burning flesh and lifts her hands away, tries to step back, feels the dark water lap up to her ankles and freezes. She can't go back in that dark water, she can't, she can't-- 

His arms surround her, hands around her waist, pulling her out of the water, pulling her into his chest. "It's okay, Nesta," he says, holding her. "You won't hurt me. You have control."

"I don't," Nesta whispers, against his chest. She rests her hands against his back, trailing strands of lightning across his wings. Her fingers twitch. Still she pours magic into the strands, the conduit. 

"Trust me," Cassian says, his arms wrapped around her. "You're doing too much, my love," he whispers, into her hair, and at the word her heart twists and twists and hurts and she gasps against his chest, her nails digging into the fighting leathers, something inside her screaming, and the magic intensifies, lightning on the beach. 

"No," she sobs, pulling deeper on the magic, "no no no no no--" 

"I love you," Cassian says, into her hair, and she screams, holding him tightly, and the lightning around her is stronger than it has ever been, so blinding Cassian hides his face against her hair. The magic is crawling over both of them now, from her skin over his, across his arms and shoulders and crackling from his wings, from his hair. 

_I don't deserve_ her brain is screaming, and the magic lashes out, and then she is screaming it and crying and her hands are fisting in his shirt. "I don't, I don't, I can't," she screams, and he holds her. 

"Show me, Nesta," he says, his voice strong, and then her magic is pushing inside his mind, and he grips her tightly as the flood of images surrounds them both. 

They stand together, holding each other on a bridge high above a canyon so deep they cannot see the bottom, and she feels the pressure of his hands on her back as they fall, his wings flaring wide. Their bodies drape over the chopping block, her hands tangled in his hair as the axe falls on them both. They cling to each other as water rushes over them, burning their lungs. They lock eyes as fire surrounds them. In the middle of a battlefield he brings his lips to hers as a spear takes them both. She kisses him deeply as the ice freezes them in their last heartbeat. He pulls at her dress as knives pierce her chest, his lips over the holes. She pulls against him as arrows pierce his wings, the sun shining through the holes, reaching her fingers to brush the inside of his wings, his breath coming in gasps of pleasure and pain. He enters her as they fall, the ground rushing up to meet them as she claws at his back. "My love, my mate," he whispers in her ear as a sword takes his head, as his blood seeps across her. She writhes against him, storm building inside her and magic crackling, as they are torn apart, as her arm comes out of her shoulder joint with a sickening jolt of pain that causes her to cry out against him. He fucks her as arrows bristle his chest, the gasp of pain and pleasure all at once. Her magic burns her whole body as she builds, blood pouring out of her mouth, and in the last moment of climax he shouts against her hair as lightning strikes them both, and two gods of war and death come together on the beach in an explosion of magic that burns away all the threads she has been holding, and leaves only darkness. 

\---

When Nesta wakes Cassian is stroking her hair, gently, propped up on an elbow, and has an arm draped over her waist. They are lying on gray sand, the black water very close to them, and there is no magic at all. Nesta stares up at the sky, watching the clouds that change too fast. "We're still here," she says, and her voice is quiet, lost in the flatness. "I didn't think we would be."

"What did you think would happen?" Cassian asks, still stroking her hair softly. Nesta's hair looks different, in the storm-cloud light of death, the golden bronze turned to almost white-gray. 

"Well, I thought we'd be dead," Nesta says, turning to look at him. He smiles, at that, but also at the sight of her face, which looks more peaceful than he has ever seen her awake. 

"I think I have now felt every possible way to die," Cassian says, and a frown creases her forehead. He smiles at her. "But I definitely have a favorite," he confides, and the hand he has draped over her waist he lifts up to trace over her body, ghosting gently over the seam of her legs, and Nesta laughs in a quiet snort. He grins at the sound. 

"I don't know what happens now," Nesta says, her smile fading. 

"Maybe we do die," Cassian says, quiet acceptance in his voice. He continues stroking Nesta's hair. She frowns a little. 

"This is just the border," she says. 

"How do you know?" he asks. 

"Bryaxis gave me a book on it," she says, shivering a little, and he pulls her in closer, tucking his wings around them. "Acheron is the river of the dead. It's the book that she used, I think." 

"Who's she?" Cassian asks, lightly. 

"The queen who bound the death gods," Nesta says, absently. "She came to me, earlier, in the storm. She said that there used to be a bridge, between life and death, that the dead had to cross, and the price of imprisoning them." 

"The Fae warrior," Cassian says, absently, and Nesta looks up at him. 

"Do you know of her? Who is she?" 

"The Bone-Carver spoke of her," he says, slowly. "She is the queen who imprisoned the Weaver, and the Bone-Carver, and Koschei. When he spoke of her, he said that no one remembers her name, that there was no Fae left with her lineage. Only humans." He shakes his head. "But that was...thousands of years ago. She destroyed the bridge? What's happened since then?" 

"They've just been waiting," Nesta says. She pulls closer to him for warmth and at the gesture he leans over and presses his lips to the top of her head, closing his eyes. 

"Should we talk about it?" he murmurs, against her hair. 

"We are," Nesta says, but she knows what he's talking about. She feels the bond in her mind and the warmth of Cassian on the other end. 

"The mating bond," he says, and she can't stop taking an uneven breath at the words said aloud. 

"I don't know," she says, honestly. She reaches up and pushes on his shoulder, forcing him to turn to lie on his back, and then curls her body over his, resting her head in the crook of his neck and shoulder, arranging a bare leg over his thigh, her hand flat against his chest. 

"Okay," he says, and turns his head to kiss the top of her head again, bringing an arm over her. "It's just very hard not to," he says, and she smiles a little against his neck. "Technically we have died together," Cassian adds. "I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we lying on the shores of the river of death right now?" 

"Don't remind me," she sighs. "That's my real problem." 

He rubs small circles against her back. "How do we get back?" he asks. "Can we get back?" 

Nesta moves her fingers, tracing aimless shapes across his chest. "I was holding the gateway open, before," she says. "I mean, I was doing a lot of things before. I don't know if I can get it back once it's closed. It's not designed to be a two-way street." 

"What's happened to all the dead in the years the bridge has been gone?" Cassian asks. 

Nesta traces out a shape on his chest, a rectangle with an arch inside it. A door. "They've been here," she says. "Trapped among the living." She shakes her head. "It was unspeakably cruel to destroy the bridge," she says. "None of them can move on. For thousands of years." 

"What can we do, love?" Cassian asks, and Nesta's heart gives a little thump. "Can we rebuild it?" 

She lifts her head and stares at his face. "How long did you know?" she asks, instead, but doesn't have to clarify the question. He lifts his hand to stroke the side of her face. 

"A long time," he says, quietly. "Since you were human." 

Nesta is silent. "I would say 'why didn't you tell me?' but even I can't reasonably ask that," she says, finally, and Cassian gives a small laugh. She rests her head back on his bare chest, and resumes tracing the line of tattoos with her fingers. "Though I guess I did literally kill you for it." 

"In about a thousand excruciatingly painful ways," Cassian says. "But to be fair, you were also feeling them."

"And many more before that," Nesta says, her voice sharp. Cassian kisses the top of her head. 

"I'm sorry," he says, gently, and she feels tears prick her eyes, turns her face to hide in his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't want it to be like that. I wanted to give you time." 

"I--I forced it," Nesta mumbles. She gives a little laugh. "I got too horny and couldn't cope." 

He laughs at that, a real laugh that she feels reverberating through his chest, making her smile involuntarily. "Well I'd hate for your needs in that area to ever go unmet again," he says, and some spark that feels suspiciously like happiness flares in her chest. She lifts her head, meets his eyes, and then she crawls on top of him and starts kissing him again, reaching one hand up to rest on the inside of his wing as she presses their bodies together. 

"Do you think we're going to die again this time?" he asks her, smiling, and she bites his lips as she sinks onto him, the spark inside her flaring brighter than it ever has in her whole life. 

\---

"What happens if we get hungry?" Cassian asks her later. "Will we get hungry? Does this count as dying for us?" 

"Well, are you hungry yet?" Nesta asks, reasonably, and he looks her over, his eyes darkening, and says: "I can think of something I want in my mouth," and then the conversation gets derailed again. 

\--- 

"I can't believe you just let me proposition you while I was drunk," Nesta says. "What a terrible mating story. How are we supposed to tell that at our wedding?" 

"Are you asking me to marry you, sweetheart?" Cassian says, grinning at her, and she glares at him, blush coloring her cheeks. "But you have to say it sometime."

"I don't have to do anything," Nesta snaps, annoyed. He reaches over and brushes her hair away from the side of her neck. It has lightened, considerably, though whether it's just the light or the magic or being in this place he can't say. He presses his lips to the side of her neck, inhaling her scent, feeling her move towards him, feeling the pulse under his lips. 

"I love you," he whispers, into her throat, kissing her pulse, then trails up the angle of her jaw, whispering between every kiss "I love you, I love you, I love you," until he captures her mouth with his, holding her head in one hand, feeling her heart race. 

"I'm not used to it," Nesta says, when he stops kissing her. 

"At least you're not screaming this time," he says. 

"I was in a very vulnerable place. Clearly." 

"Which, to be fair, you put yourself in."

"I was provoked," she says, eyes glittering. 

"I was seduced." 

"By a drunk woman!" 

"By my _mate_, Nesta." 

"Who you did not inform _was_ your mate, you bastard." 

"But you already knew," Cassian says, his inches millimeters from her lips, and to avoid answering she kisses him, lifting her hands to his head, and pulling him down on top of her. 

\---

"It's very difficult to have a conversation when you have to stop and have sex every third sentence," Nesta says, lying back in the sand. 

"Welcome to being mated Fae," Cassian says. "It takes a while to adjust."

"How long?" Nesta asks, looking over at him. 

He shrugs. "It's different for everyone," he says. "A few weeks, a few months. Maybe more." 

"It's different," Nesta says, rolling on her side to look at him. 

"Than what?" he asks her, turning his head to meet her eyes. She looks down. 

"The sex," she says, and a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. 

"Well, yes," he says. "I like to think that some of that might be me, though." 

Nesta rolls her eyes. "Full of yourself, aren't you?" 

"Would you like me to keep count of your orgasms for you, sweetheart?" he says, turning over and crawling towards her. 

She reaches over and pulls his shoulder so that he collapses on top of her, head on her chest, laughing. He reaches one hand up and strokes her hair. 

"This has got to be one of the more unique ways to accept a bond, though," he says, staring at the black water. 

"I don't know what to do," Nesta says, softly. He grows silent and looks up at her. "They're still there," she says, her eyes unfocused, and he wraps one arm around her waist. She reaches a hand up, pointing to a spot in midair. "I opened the gateway there," she says. "But when the magic went so did the gateway. I don't know how to get it from this side." 

"Tell me about them," Cassian says, and she looks down at him and then she does. 

Nesta tells him about the bookstore, about decorating it in empty shelves, how she bought it before she knew she would need it for stories for the dead. She tells him about Keres, about Hest. She tells him about meeting Bryaxis, the blindfold in the library, and about the book Acheron, the way it fades in and out of memory and how some parts can only be remembered when death magic is in use. While she talks Cassian sits next to her, cradling her in his wing, his hand strong and warm in hers. She stares at his hand when she tells him about Faolin. 

"So that's what Lucien meant," he says, thoughtfully. She looks up, but there is no anger or jealousy on his face. He looks at her and squeezes her hand. "He said that you had--hurt someone, with your magic." 

"Yes," Nesta says, looking down. "It was just a nightmare, just like always. But when I threw out the net to Elain, it--it got him, too." She shivers. "I woke up and I could smell burning flesh," she says, her tone naked, and he squeezes her hand. "Lucien found him later and said that the burns were still there, that they didn't heal the way a High Fae normally would." 

"Of course you're deadly, sweetheart," he murmurs, looking down at her. "You beautiful, deadly thing. You've never been helpless. My mate." He places both hands on the side of her head and looks into her face, his dark eyes burning. "You're exquisite," he says, kissing her gently. "I'm sorry you had to go through anything alone." 

"I thought you--wouldn't want to hear about it," Nesta says. "The other males." 

"You may be too drunk to remember this, but you did tell me that you think about me before you come, and also that whenever you touched another male you thought about me," he says, and she blushes scarlet and looks away. 

"Sounds like I was extremely drunk," Nesta says. 

Cassian laughs. "Drunk people have an unfortunate habit of saying what they really think," he says. "Yes, males tend to get jealous when a mated partner is concerned. But obviously it didn't stop me from wanting you." 

Nesta looks at him, blush fading, and the corners of her mouth rise in a cruel smile he is coming to adore. "Did it encourage you?" she says, quietly. "Do you like hearing that I thought about you when I fucked other males?" 

"This should not make me as horny as it does," Cassian says, but Nesta's already smirking at his erection. 

"You do," she breathes, smile deepening, and pushes him back in the sand. "You said that I knew about the mating bond," she says, trailing her fingers down his body. 

"You did," he says. "Maybe I knew longer, but you've known. You can't feign innocence." 

"When did you know?" she asks, tracing her fingers across the tattoos of his chest. 

"Across the wall," Cassian says. She hums, deep in her throat. "That's when you knew, too." 

"Sort of," Nesta says, tracing her fingers lower, down the planes of his abdomen. "I was in denial for so long. But I always had to think about you to come." She watches his cock twitch at her words, and a low laugh escapes her. "I had so many poor imitations for this," she says, and traces her fingers lower, brushing down the length of his shaft, following it with her tongue, and then she can't talk anymore, and all Cassian can say is her name, and _mine_, over, and over, and over. 

\--- 

"Mating bonds," Nesta says, her head on his chest. "Gods." 

"Well, I'm going to use 'was dead' on the excuse for why I'm not at work," he says, lightly. She lifts her head to meet his eyes. 

"I don't know how much time passed," she says, flatly. "Or how much time is passing." 

"I know," he says, gently, stroking her hair, and she lays her head back down on his chest. 

"I don't even know what will happen when we go back," she says, then more quietly, with soft hurt in her voice: "We don't even live in the same place." 

"Nesta," Cassian says, and forces her to look into his eyes. "It does not matter," he says. "I will not lose you. Whatever you want to do, we will do it. If you want me to move into your shitty apartment, fine. Put in a sword rack for me. I have a house, you know, if you want to get out of Velaris and come back to Illyria with me. If you want to do none of those things, we can tell Rhys to fuck off and I will take a couple of decades off and leave Prythian. I do not care." 

Nesta's eyes fill with tears and he pulls her to his chest, holding her tightly. "You can't think I would ever reject you," he murmurs into her hair. "My mate, my love. Never." 

"What if I can't leave?" she says. "I don't know how this works." She waves a hand towards the river, beside them, the mountains behind them with peaks encased in clouds, the black water, the ever-changing clouds, then sighs against his chest. "This is a stupid place to take a honeymoon," she mutters, and he laughs, warm, reassuring laughter that makes her smile in spite of herself. 

"If we die, we die. If we go back we'll figure it out," he says. "If you want to we can even live in the bookstore." He kisses the top of her head again. "We'll figure it out. I am yours." 

Nesta is silent, breathing in the smell of him, her face against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart. She counts out twenty heartbeats, and in the span of those twenty heartbeats she feels something expanding, at the corners of her vision, like a road widening, like a boat turning on an anchor. 

"I love you," she says, her voice small, but he hears her. 

\--- 

She watches him sleep, the rise and fall of his chest, both of them wrapped in his wings. She smooths back his hair from his face, strokes the curve of his shoulder, runs her fingertips over his tattoos, memorizing them. It is the first time her future has had a shape, and she cannot forget it. 

When he wakes, kissing her softly, she takes him by the hand and they stand, finding discarded clothes on the beach, shaking sand out of black silk and his fighting leathers. 

"I know this must be death because I don't have sand in every possible crevice," Cassian says, and she laughs. Nesta helps him dress, pulling his leathers over his chest, and he helps her do the buttons on her black dress, kissing her neck under the high collar before he fastens the final ones. 

"Are you ready?" he asks her, looking her in the face, brushing a lock of pale hair behind her ear. 

"Yes," Nesta says, and he kisses her once, softly, and steps back. 

She turns, then, to face the black water, standing on the gray sand with her bare feet. Nesta closes her eyes, and she reaches inside herself, to feel the magic waiting there, as deep and crackling as ever, but now she feels him in the back of her mind, a knot of security and confidence. She reaches down and pulls at the magic, separating it into threads. 

She can feel how she would make a gateway from this side, which reassures her. She wasn't sure she would be able to. The dead on the other side pull her, like a beacon, like a weak point between the worlds she can bridge with that crackling magic. But she doesn't open the conduit. She reaches down deep, pulling magic up between her hands, and thinks about pages of Acheron, thinks about the bridge that was destroyed. When she opens her eyes the magic is crackling there, silent and luminous, between her fingers. It lifts the edges of her hair, paler now than it's ever been, pulls at the hem of her dress, escapes from her in little crackles of electricity that dissipate in the air. The clouds overhead seem to swirl faster. 

Nesta looks out over the black water and thinks about the Cauldron, thinks about the feeling of that water. She looks over the horizon, stares into Acheron, the river of the dead. Nesta raises her hands and then, slowly, she begins to build a bridge. 

This isn't mentioned in any of the books. But there was a bridge here, once, and the land of the dead has memory, and it wants there to be a bridge again, and it helps her. 

At some point she feels Cassian's hand on the small of her back, supporting her, and thinks of his hand on her back giving her strength in another memory, in a war, when she looked to the Cauldron from across the world. _He is here for the difficult things I have to do,_ she thinks, _to support me. A mate_. And she leans back into that touch, accepting that strength, and the magic continues to flow through her. 

When she finishes, the land of the dead has changed. The clouds are low on the horizon, but move slowly, more slowly than she has seen since she has been here. The bridge is black, polished marble, with railings in lacy whorls, and stretches farther than she can see. Magic crackles from its overhangs. Far off in the distance of the black water, the clouds break and there is a ray of sunlight. 

From the low clouds and the overhangs of the bridge, magic moves lazily in sparks and prongs. A line connects the bridge and the clouds, and when the lightning clears a spirit stands on that beach, a wraith with hair that disappears into shadow. She turns to the bridge and reaches one hand forward, touches the side of the black bridge. Cassian and Nesta stand, almost touching, and watch her as she takes the first steps onto the bridge. 

"You're amazing," Cassian whispers in her ear, and when she turns to him and opens her eyes they burn with magic. "They can cross now, Nesta. Because of you." 

She reaches for him, holding his hands with the magic in both of hers, lightning spreading over his wings, his hair, his fighting leathers. "Send me your casualties, Lord of Bloodshed," she says, her voice not entirely her own, and then reaches into herself again and weaves a gateway. 

Cassian thinks of the Bone Carver, unbidden, _as new as a fawn and as ancient as the sea,_ and he watches Nesta as magic explodes from her, as a rectangle of solid light appears before her on the beach with crackling, electric lace edges that form and re-form. "It is time," she says turning to him, and he takes her hand, unafraid, as they walk through the gateway. 

\--- 

Cassian steps out into a place he has never seen before. Tall, dark wood shelves around him are half-filled with stacks of paper bound carelessly together, with a ladder in the corner to reach the top shelves. A desk and three narrow windows are to his left, covered with pale sheer curtains, and couches under them. On the desk sits a stack of paper and as he stares at it, words appear on the page, then the next page, covering them faster than he can follow. He looks at Nesta, who is bringing her hands together, and then the gateway closes, leaving afterimages burning in his vision. 

Nesta stands in the center of the bookstore in her black silk dress, still holding the magic, her eyes made of light and electricity crackling off her hands, her hair. She is still not quite entirely herself, with the magic, and when she opens her eyes they move over him without seeing. She walks towards the desk, her steps loosing sparks. 

"Stories not for the living," she murmurs, and makes a sharp motion with her hands over the pages. For a moment lightning fills the whole bookstore, burning his eyes, and Cassian raises a hand to cover his eyes against the flash, and then it is over. 

When he can see again, the magic has gone from Nesta. She stands in the middle of the floor, hands at her sides, head bowed. The bookshelves are empty to him, now. Cassian does not think they are actually empty. He takes a step towards her. 

Nesta turns to him, and he takes another step towards her and takes her into his arms. Her hair, still paler than before in the light of this world, spills over the black silk of her dress, and he holds them both wrapped in his wings. 

"We're back," she says, her voice unsteady. She is trembling, just a little, in his arms. 

"I love you," he says, again, and then she puts her arms around his waist, hugging him hard. 

"I love you," she whispers, and then they are home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -okay thanks for the wild ride yall!  
-FYI the working title for this fic was "nesta is a death god who owns a bookstore" I only came up with the actual title the last minute while posting it to AO3. But The Books Of The Living And The Dead is a way cooler title  
-thank you for all your reviews. they give me life and I'm sorry I don't respond to them all  
-I watch a lot of Kdramas & this story was v inspired by Hotel del Luna (& Beautiful Vampire). my favorite procedural trope is Grim Reapers and that is 100% due to Goblin and Hotel Del Luna and you should watch them if you're into that.  
-I'm looking for more ACOTAR content on my twitter/tumblr (@ailuridaen and abigail-nicole) rec me fanblogs plz  
-I only wanna write Nessian fic because my tiny heart needs their story resolved  
-now that this itch is scratched I just wanna reread Queen of Shadows because I miss Aelin and Aedion hanging out on the couch together


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